UK and Finland head table in transposing telecom legislation

By Peter Chapman

Date: 10/11/04

Finland and the UK lead the rest of the EU member states in implementation of communications legislation.

Fabio Colasanti, director-general of the Commission's information society department (DG Infso) said the duo were the clear leaders in this year's implementation report, to be issued next week.

Colasanti told European Voice that the report would name and shame five laggards which have yet to transpose the basic EU 'primary legislation' into their national law. They are Luxembourg, the Union's richest state, Greece, Belgium, Estonia and the Czech Republic.

He warned that the results should be read with some caution. Although 20 member states have transposed the primary legislation, he said that there was "still a lot of work to do" in implementing the details, or secondary legislation, that flesh out the EU laws.

While this could cover relatively small details such as budgets for regulators and their organizational structures, these could make the difference between having effective competition or not in many countries.

"If you look at the size of legislation needed country by country it is 200-300 pages. That is a major item," he said, adding that both new entrants to telecoms markets and old monopoly operators would find plenty to discourage and encourage them.

"If you are a new entrant you will feel that not enough is being done to open up markets, and if you are an incumbent, you will feel constrained by over-regulation," he said.

Despite the apparent failure of Estonia, usually seen as relatively advanced in the information technology and telecoms fields, and the Czech Republic, he said that they were not the worst offenders among the EU new boys.

That dubious distinction goes to Cyprus. "It has been a market economy for many years but is terrible from a point of view of competition [in telecoms]. The incumbent operator is still essentially part of the ministry of telecommunications and its budget is still voted on by parliament."

Colasanti highlighted general problems common to most of the ten new member states.

"There is still a lot to be done on a lot of counts. Regulatory authorities are not effective. Very often the problem is that they don't have the resources and expertise."

Colasanti said regulators in the new member states were often still too close to national governments. "It is not black and white in the regulatory framework, but it is understood that this [independence] is something that people want."

Colasanti said that the report would show that EU policies intended to boost fast broadband internet services were beginning to pay dividends and that there were few major gaps in the law holding back the sector. He added that more competition had helped create a big market for premium content services, from music to sport. France is held up as a beacon of change in the broadband sector.

The annual implementation report has been one of the Commission's main economic barometers. Member states take a dim view of criticism from the EU executive, and in the past the Commission has been under pressure to temper some of its more critical comments.

Colasanti admitted that formal adoption of the report had been "made easier" this year by the shortage of translators.

That means only a short summary of the report, translated into all community languages, needs to be officially rubber-stamped by the full college of commissioners.

The rest of the report, running into several hundred pages, will be published as an informal "working document" containing the fine details.

Anticipating the 2004 implementation report to be issued in mid November 2004, article reports that the UK and Finland are singled out as leaders in terms of implementing of EU communications legislation. Article is based on an interview with Fabio Colasanti, Director-General of the European Commission's Directorate-General Information Society (DG Info).

European Commission: DG Information Society http://ec.europa.eu/comm/dgs/information_society/index_en.htm

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