Activites

• 2001/02/23 Final act published in Official Journal
• 2000/05/18 Decision by Parliament, 1st reading/single reading
  • T5-0231/2000 summary

    The European Parliament adopted the resolution drafted by Reino PAASILINNA (PES, Finland) on the Commission's fifth report on the Commission's regulatory package. Whilst it welcomes the implementation of the 1998 regulatory package, it noted that in some cases, implementation is purely formal. Parliament expressed its concern at the fact that limited offer at the local loop level has prevented liberalisation from providing its full potential to most users, and from reduction of the cost of access to the internet to a level where it would become affordable to all citizens. It suggested that a unified approach to licensing would be valuable in order to improve market operation and spectrum availability. Parliament regretted that the Commission report did not include any figures on fees for the use of radio frequecies. Operators, and particularly incumbents, should provide interconnection and co-location on commercial terms. There are still too many obstacles to new investors, particularly for pan-European operators. The Commission is asked to facilitate market opening by publishing best practice benchmarks for market openness and a ranking of Member States for market openness performance. The Parliament also asked that carrier pre-selection be implemented in an easy and transparent way for consumers. It acknowledged that the liberalisation of the market has not had adverse consequences on the availability of universal service but was concerned that access to new services does not seem to have spread beyond the main urban centres, which runs counter to the need for regional equality and the equal rights of citizens in society. The Commission is asked to monitor universal service provision closely to ensure that market mechanisms deliver enhanced access for all EU citizens, wherever they live.�

• 2000/05/17 Debate in Parliament
  • Debate in Parliament
• 2000/03/28 Vote in committee, 1st reading/single reading
  • A5-0094/2000
• 2000/03/13 Committee referral announced in Parliament, 1st reading/single reading
• 1999/11/10 Non-legislative basic document published
  • COM(1999)0537 summary

    PURPOSE : To present a report on the state of implementation of the current telecommunications regulatory framework. CONTENT : This is the fifth report on the telecom regulatory framework. It assesses the extent to which the harmonisation directives have been transposed and analyses the way in which the national rules apply those principles in practice. It gives an overview of the state of the telecommunications services markets in Member States. It then identifies the main remaining barriers to the achievement of a single European market. The key conclusion is that, less than 2 years after the introduction of full competition, the regulatory framework drives telecommunications services markets in the Member States with an accelerating growth rate, large numbers of market entrants and falling tariffs. The national markets will have increased 7% on 1998 and the value of mobile services by around 16%. There is a marked increase in the number of operators both in the international and the domestic calls market. The number of Internet hosts per thousand inhabitants is estimated to have grown at an average of 125% across the Union from January 1998 to July 1999. Both residential and business tariffs are down in most Member States. There remain important problems to be resolved: - Barriers to the single market include the comparatively low level of harmonisation in the Community licensing and interconnection regimes and the way in which Community rules are implemented at national level. - The role of national regulatory authorities is impeded by disparities in their powers and resources, the way in which regulatory tasks are shared with other bodies, and differences in the procedures in place. They need to be more active particularly in seeking interconnection agreements. - Failure to implement the framework for cost accounting in many Member States seems to be contributing to excessive price squeezes, in particular between retail and interconnections tariffs. - There is a lack of competition in the local access market in all Member states, although steps are being taken to remedy this. - The Commission finds it difficult to assess whether voice telephony tariffs have actually been rebalanced. Rebalancing is necessary to avoid price squeezes. - There are disparities in consumer protection cross the Member States. - The current framework does not explicitly address issues such as special schemes for Internet access.�

  • DG [{'url': 'http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/connect/index_en.htm', 'title': 'Communications Networks, Content and Technology'}],

Documents

• Non-legislative basic document published: COM(1999)0537
• Committee report tabled for plenary, single reading: A5-0094/2000
• Debate in Parliament: Debate in Parliament
• Decision by Parliament, 1st reading/single reading: T5-0231/2000

History

(these mark the time of scraping, not the official date of the change)