Van Miert under attack over ‘insensitive’ report on telecoms markets

Date: 26/06/1997

By Chris Johnstone

TELECOMS ministers are set to take Competition Commissioner Karel van Miert to task this week after he bruised some national egos over their lamentable record on opening up domestic markets.

A handful of ministers have lined up to take their revenge on Van Miert at a meeting in

Luxembourg tomorrow (27 June) over a report published earlier this month on the implementation of telecoms legislation. They are angered at the 'insensitive' way the European Commission report classified countries as good or bad in meeting their commitments to open up telecoms markets ahead of full competition from January 1999. Even worse, they say, the document was littered with errors and was already well out of date by the time it appeared.

The report grouped countries into four categories, ranging from those where almost all market opening measures were in force (Denmark, Finland, Sweden and the UK) to those trailing badly (Belgium, Greece, Portugal and Spain).

The last three have all been given extra time to prepare their markets for the full force of telecoms competition across all sectors including the core business of ordinary domestic phone calls. Together with Belgium, they are leading the attack on Van Miert.

A Belgian official said the report failed to acknowledge that it was a snapshot of the situation at a given date and did not therefore include measures passed by the government late last month.

This was echoed by a Spanish official, who said: “The Commission officials did not take the trouble to consult the regulatory officials in Spain or in other countries. The conclusions of the Council [of Ministers] will be clear: we accept what you say in the report, but next time do it better.”

But one major telecoms firm with pan-European operations welcomed the report from the Commission task force charged with shadowing the implementation of telecoms measures.

“We have high hopes for the task force. Now that the 1998 market opening package is in place, the emphasis is very much on implementation and enforcement,” said a BT spokesman.