10 EU NATIONS STILL HAVE TO TRANSPOSE TELECOM REGULATORY FRAMEWORK.

More than four weeks after the cut-off date for transposing the new regulatory framework for telecommunications in the EU, July 25, no more than five Member States have met the deadline: Finland, Denmark, Sweden, the United Kingdom and Ireland. Italy and Austria are on the right track to doing the same, according to the European Commission. The other counties are laying themselves wide open to infringement proceedings. Nothing has changed very much since the warning given last July 25 by European Commissioner Erkki Liikanen for the Information Society. Germany in particular is lagging seriously behind, confirm Commission sources. The slow pace at which the country is meeting its requirements on this score was attacked by the ECTA (European Competitive Telecommunications Association) in July.

ECTA also recalled that, in order to implement the new legislative package, the Member States must carry out reviews of the various relevant markets: if there is no real competition on the market, the national regulatory authorities can impose obligations on operators with significant market power. But a good many Member States have...