Brussels, 15/10/2008 (Agence Europe) - On Wednesday 15 October 2008, the European Commission adopted a recommendation to reduce administrative demands on national telecoms regulators when submitting draft regulatory measures to open up networks to competition (in line with the 'Article 7 procedure') to the Commission. The new rules allow national regulators to use a simplified, shorter standard form to notify the Commission of certain decisions, which will considerably simply and speed up the EU consultation process. To further streamline the process, the recommendation invites national regulators to submit their market analyses together with proposed remedies rather than separately. The new system will allow timelier implementation of regulatory measures and increased legal certainty to market players and increased legal security for market players investing in the EU telecoms industry, explains the Commission. EU Information Society and Media Commissioner Viviane Reding said: 'It is time to free resources and focus on those markets where bottlenecks persist and effective competition still needs to be accompanied by regulatory oversight, such as in broadband access.'
The simplified notification procedure will apply to: decisions to withdraw regulations from markets which the Commission presumes no longer need sector-specific regulation (the Commission reduced the number of markets from 18 to 7 in a November 2007 recommendation); b) decisions not to regulate markets where the Commission presumes sector-specific regulation to be appropriate but which remain competitive in practice; c) amendments to technical details of a previously imposed remedy (eg delivery times or the extension of reporting obligations); d) extension of existing measures to another market player in a similar situation (particularly in call termination markets). In line with its Better Regulation drive, the Commission will monitor the practical consequences of the new recommendation and use the forthcoming reform of the EU telecoms rules (the Council will gives its view on this on 27 November 2008 before the final reading in the EP, Ed.) to further cut red tape for the regulators.
The recommendation can be found at:
http: //ec.europa.eu/information_society/policy/ecomm/implementation_enforcements/article_7/index_en.htm (I.L. trans fl)