TELECOMMUNICATIONS : COMMISSION REVISES TELECOMS PACKAGE.

The European Commission published, on 7 November, a modified version of its telecoms package to take into account, in this vast reform of rules framing electronic communications in the EU, the European Parliament's amendments (first reading) as well as the debates underway in the Council. On 27 November, the French EU Presidency reached a political agreement on the basis of a text drafted in the Council, and not of this modified proposal, which would have arrived "too late", according to member states.

This is also the opportunity for the EU executive to restate its ambitions for an internal market for telecoms, currently thought to be too fragmented. The mix therefore remains the same: more powers at EU level for more competition, new affordable wireless broadband services and common rights for European consumers.

"SMALL OFFICE"

In fact, though the Commission agrees to limit the size and the activities of its proposed European telecoms authority (emptied of any responsibility for network security), it preserves its Community character. Redubbed the Body of European Regulators in Telecoms (BERT), it will have its "personal and financial independence [ ] fully ensured", insists the Commission in a press release. This is agreed on with member states. "The heads of the national telecoms regulators will be given a strong role in the management of the new office and in the appointment of its managing director," it nonetheless specified. As for the staff for this "small office," it will be made up of 50% seconded experts from national regulators, as the EP wanted. This means, according to the Commission's modified proposal, 20 experts maximum: ten national and ten recruited by the body itself.

Financial contributions to the body from each national regulator, moreover, become voluntary. And the Commission explains that "if these contributions were made compulsory, certain national regulators would have difficulty contributing to the office's funding given their meagre financial resources".

For more coherence in the regulation of competition between old and new telecoms operators, the Commission returns to its proposed veto on national regulators' remedial measures. Currently simply consulted, the Commission wants to be able to force regulators to modify or withdraw a proposed measure that it and the new office have judged to be contrary to the single market or incompatible with EU law. The office's participation would be "direct and efficient,"...