Brussels chiefs at odds over telecoms

dahamsta

Financial Times

Long-awaited proposals to regulate the European Union's telecoms market will be unveiled on Wednesday, after a last-minute battle between Mario Monti, EU competition commissioner, and Erkki Liikanen, his colleague responsible for telecoms.

Although the two men will make a show of unity, last minute changes put forward by Mr Monti's staff to a list of "market recommendations" have toned down references to regulation of the cable industry, despite Mr Liikanen's earlier wishes.

Mr Monti has long been uneasy about his colleague's plans to set out a series of telecoms and media sectors which can be regulated by national authorities on a transitional basis. One concern is that it might complicate the functioning of ordinary competition law.

[...]

dahamsta

Bit more on this. The middle story gives the best overview:

http://search.ft.com/search/article.html?id=030219006032
http://search.ft.com/search/article.html?id=030220000660
http://search.ft.com/search/article.html?id=030220000412

It is an open secret in Brussels that Mario Monti, the professorial European Union competition chief, and Erkki Liikanen, the technology-obsessed industry commissioner, have been battling for months over the future regulation of the telecoms sector.

What was not known, however, was that the two men, who see each other at least once a week in the regular European Commission meeting, had felt the need to express their differences in writing in November.

In a letter that begins with a handwritten "Dear Erkki", Mr Monti warns his colleague about the apparent failure of the EU's effort to liberalise the market for high-speed internet.

For Mr Monti, the fact that the sector is still dominated by former monopolists is nothing short of a "failure" of the legislation written by Mr Liikanen more than two years ago.

The competition commissioner, ever proud of his reputation as a tough watchdog, warns it would be "delicate to present the above described results without announcing either a reappraisal of [the Commission strategy] or measures of redress".

In the letter, the competition chief urges Mr Liikanen to choose the second option and push large internet operators to reduce the fees they charge their rivals to use their infrastructure. He also suggests a face-to-face meeting "to discuss these matters".

Mr Liikanen's reaction to the letter can be gauged by his reply, which begins with a formal "Dear Commissioner". Later on, he appears to reject the idea of a personal meeting with his colleague, suggesting a meeting of senior officials instead.

[...]

I think they're both right, although I think Liikanen actually has a stronger argument, in that pricing issues should really be the territory of the Competition Commissioner. That said, it's an old argument and an ongoing problem, as we've seen locally.

Unfortunately though, even though Liikanen has (in my view) the higher moral ground, he handled this very badly and comes off as arrogant and uncooperative; and that's not just bad politics, it's bad for business too. It'll be interesting to see if we hear any more about this.

adam

zz03

Originally posted by dahamsta
For Mr Monti, the fact that the sector is still dominated by former monopolists is nothing short of a "failure" of the legislation written by Mr Liikanen more than two years ago.

If the domination of national markets by “former” monopolists is “failure” for Monti, surely he could start by making an example in the worst case scenario - i.e. Ireland, whose market is dominated by two so called “former” monopolists?

Working backwards to attack lesser offenders when the job here is done...

zz..