EU telecommunications regulators have agreed to form a new body t...

Regulators Group (ER), an advisory body to the EC, and the Independent Regulators Group (IRG), an information-sharing organization, agreed to create an entity under Belgian law that will build on the IRG and be funded by all national regulators, the source said. A key debate in the telecommunications reform process has been inconsistency among national regulators in imposing competition rules on dominant players. The reform package calls for creation of the market authority to advise the EC and to work with national regulators on competition. In its letter to Information Society and Media Commissioner Viviane Reding prior to the Nov. 13 publication of the EC proposal, the ERG endorsed consistent oversight and closer cooperation between national regulators and between the ERG and the EC, but opposed “new layers of unnecessary centralism.” Instead, it said, “we believe in the merits of strengthening the ERG model by enhancing cooperation between national regulators” by, among other things, incorporating the IRG as a legal entity to speed resources to the ERG. In a Dec. 6 response, Reding said the EC “gave a lot of thought” to whether the ERG itself could be strengthened under existing rules. But, she said, “we have now reached the legal limits of the present regulatory framework,” which envisions the ERG as an advisor to the EC that “is in many respects dependent on the Commission -- nothing less, but also nothing more.” The proposal to create a private body makes clear that the ERG wants to be a fully independent body with its own resources, she said. Establishment of such an entity, which occurs outside the scope of Community law, “adds some complexity to the regulatory process in addition to the ERG,” she said. The substructure of national contributions to its budget also remain to be seen, she said. And the EC has proposed upgrading legal basis of the ERG from an EC decision to a regulation adopted jointly by the Parliament and Council. In contrast to today’s ERG, and even more the intermediary private law body IRG, the new authority envisioned by the reform proposal would operate unambiguously and openly on the foundation of Community law, with full legitimacy to act in the process leading to Community decisions, Reding said. The new IRG entity, however, is the first step toward such an authority, the source said.