General authorizations and individual licences in the field of telecommunications services (common framework)

The rapporteur considered that general licences should be favoured over individual licences. Against this background, he called for the price for licences not to be set too high and stressed that licensing conditions should be harmonised. While confirming that he would prefer a restricted directive to a blockage at second reading, he re-tabled six amendments in which he called for the directive’s scope to be extended to general licences. Commissioner Bangemann stated that setting up an independent telecommunications regulatory authority was premature as, in Council, not one Member State had accepted such an initiative. In his opinion, it was, however, now time to set up an informal group consisting of representatives of the Member State regulatory authorities, along the lines of the European Medicines Agency which sat in London. The rapporteur also asked Mr Bangemann to provide Parliament with the results of a study on the added value of setting up a European regulatory authority. The Commissioner promised to do this by the end of February. He also announced the organisation of a workshop on this subject, the summary of which would be given to Parliament. Finally, Mr Bangemann said that the Commission accepted all Parliament’s amendments.