A new authority emerging out of harmonization needs: is berec the right solution for european ecommunications market?

Since the foundation of European Community, creating of an effective eCommunications single market has been a matter of highest political priority. As a result of certain technological development and enhanced competition as well as keeping with the principle of 'better regulation needs, the EU Commission has reviewed 2002 Regulatory Framework which preliminarily aimed at shedding light on a number of important problems that remain to be solved, in particular the lack of consistency in the application of EU rules and the regulatory fragmentation of the internal market. However, due to several reasons, the Union has not become so successful in constituting such a harmonized eCommunications market mainly stemming from different applications applied in different member states. To overcome these obstacles, the Commission is therefore, at the end decided to establish a new Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC) which has the responsibility to work in close cooperation with NRAs and the Commission. It is understood that the Authority has an advisory role vis-à-vis the Commission as regards market regulation issues and could issue non-binding guidelines, recommendations and binding decisions in specific circumstances to promote and disseminate good practices among the NRAs. However, there are also some hesitations about the power of BEREC and its capability with regard to ensure consistency of NRAs' approaches and/or implementations. In this paper, it is discussed as to whether the creation of the BEREC is the right solution for the intended results of a harmonized eCommunications market and elimination of inconsistency in the application of EU rules.

BEREC ,

eCommunications ,

Harmonization ,

EU Commission ,

2002 Regulatory Framework ,