Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-02-28-Speech-3-129"
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"en.20010228.7.3-129"2
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"Mr President, the telecommunications companies proclaim that competition should regulate the market. But can we trust in competition as a regulator of the market? No, we cannot. Although telephone charges have gone down in many countries, not all charges have. For example, in Finland charges for local wired telephone calls have risen by a quarter in the last few years. In addition, it is impossible for consumers to discover what mobile phone calls cost to different companies’ networks or wired telephones.
We live in a jungle, where the laws of the jungle determine prices. The lion’s share of profits are being grabbed by supranational operators whose objective it is to dominate the market. Unfortunately, the governments of certain Member States of the Union are like Tarzan, King of the Jungle, who has in his hands a limited natural resource – new frequencies. The central left governments of Germany and Britain have auctioned off mobile phone UMTS frequencies to telecommunications companies in such a way that a crisis is looming for the companies involved and many banks. The stock market bubble has now burst as far as that sort of thinking is concerned, based as it was on a belief in the power of information technology to work miracles.
The auctions have sabotaged the
Europe project. They have weakened democracy. They have caused telephone charges to go sky-high. They are an imposition on the free flow of information and data. Would all of this have been avoidable if there had been a framework directive on telecommunications at the disposal of the EU? I would like to think so, although it is not certain it would have. But now we have to try out a framework directive, and Mr Paasilinna has been engaged on an immense task in its preparation. He is calling for a thorough investigation into the financial effects of auctions. Our group supports this. However, it is difficult to agree with Mrs Niebler’s amendment to the framework directive. It is based on the values and interests of certain European monopolies and is at odds with a democratic information society."@en1
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