Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-05-23-Speech-3-073"
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"en.20070523.3.3-073"2
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"One of the crucial questions in EU legislative work should be what things in general need to be regulated and what method of regulation best promotes the objective set. On the one hand we have to address the flaws in the system and ensure that regulation is detailed enough to achieve the objective. On the other hand, regulation has to be sufficiently flexible for it to encourage competition and innovation and not paralyse development with quibbling details.
The compromise achieved on the proposal for a regulation to lower roaming charges is, I think, an excellent piece of EU legislation.
First of all it corrects a flaw. Telecommunications operators have kept charges for phone calls overseas unreasonably high for years, and they have not engaged in healthy competition in their pricing policies. Despite prompting by the Commission, charges have barely fallen. As in this case the market was unable to correct its own errors, it had to be done by means of EU legislation.
This is a concrete example of a benefit which the EU has produced for consumers, which should be remembered when next time people feel like raging about the EU. We have to interfere if the market is not working and operators are overcharging, using means which directly and substantially reduce people’s mobile phone bills when abroad.
Secondly, the regulation specifically points the market in a healthier direction: it will not stifle it, but encourage competition in the future. Price caps for phone calls in the regulation have not been brought down so low that there is no room for competition beneath them. Low price caps will also boost competition in other areas of the business. The regulation, furthermore, will have a far-reaching impact: if charges are guided downwards it would be silly to raise them again once the regulation has expired.
With capped prices operators will nevertheless be left with a profit margin, enabling product development and innovation to continue."@en1
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