Conflict puts telecoms opening on hold

Date: 16/01/1997

A SERIES of inter-institutional quarrels is threatening to delay the opening of the European telecommunications market to competition.

The Council of Ministers is already locked in a dispute with the European Parliament over a law designed to allow new entrants to the market to hook up to the existing network the interconnection directive.

Without this legal framework, which sets the method for calculating interconnection charges and open access to networks, the ground rules for full liberalisation from January 1998 will not exist.

Differences between the two sides have not been resolved, thus taking the directive into a six-week 'conciliation' process between the Parliament and the Council.

The Dutch presidency is also expecting further hard-won agreements on how to license operators, defining leased lines and open network provision, to go to conciliation.

“These are crucial directives and we are going to have some real problems,” said an official. “We should be able to come to an agreement, but it does mean that we will have another delay.”

Member states will need a year to turn the directives into national law, but the conciliation talks will make the January 1998 deadline difficult to achieve.