Glad to note that there are others out there looking at the EC efforts to harmonise, centralise, and regulate better (or not?).
Ofcomwatch posted a comment on the recent EC proposals on reforming the framework for EU telecommunications (analysis here). The current framework works quite well, but the idea is to improve it, enable it to face new challenges and to assist the EU telecoms industry in competing on the global market. Viviane Reding (the information society commissioner) contemplates setting up of an EU regulatory body to oversee national regulators in this area.
Not that I know that much about telecoms, but I see that the EU is struggling with a number of conflicting (or at least competing) policy aims (compare with the debate on the need for maximum harmonisation in the area of consumer protection law):
- in order to ensure harmonisation, greater convergence of laws and regulations and consistency in application and interpretation of EC law we ought to centralise; but on the other hand why harmonise? surely harmonisation is not an end in itself – it is merely a tool to achieve…. well, what exactly? should we not reconsider the aims of harmonisation before we decide how far we go?
- wishing to better respond to the constantly changing world markets we ought to improve the quality (and assess the quantity) of the regulatory process and its outcomes – does that mean centralising or decetralising? is ‘better regulation’ (so high on the EC agenda) better achieved on the EU or national level?
who decides, who decides – that is the question…
Cmooon you can do better than this? Perhaps flesh out a bit more each of those interesting thoughts…?
These were really just a couple of ideas which occured to me recently. I am currently working on a paper on this topic and will be posting more info about it once it is published. thanks for ‘those interesting thoughts!’ that’s encouraging…
Would be very interested to see the results of that paper
Both the questions are pretty central to the review of the Telecoms Framework specifically and (possibly) the continued completion of the Single Market itself.