European telecommunications giants urge Ribera to facilitate mergers | Companies | EUROtoday

The CEOs of the primary European telecommunications firms met this Thursday in Brussels with the vice-president of the European Commission, Teresa Ribera, and the president of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, to convey first-hand their concern in regards to the present fragmentation of the market and the pressing have to facilitate cross-border and nationwide mergers.

The assembly takes place at a time of most political relevance, lower than two weeks earlier than the Community Executive presents the brand new Digital Networks Act. This regulation, scheduled for subsequent January 20 based on the Commission’s official calendar, seeks to definitively promote investments in new era infrastructure.

Under the umbrella of the Connect Europe employers’ affiliation, the delegation has had the presence of essential figures corresponding to Marc Murtra, CEO of Telefónica; Margherita Della Valle, from the Vodafone Group; Pietro Labriola, from the Italian TIM; Ana Figueiredo, from the Portuguese MEO; Lars Thomsen, from the Danish Telenor; and Dominique Leroy, representing the board of administrators of Deutsche Telekom. Together with them, the final director of the affiliation, Alessandro Gropelli, has coordinated a unanimous message: the present competitors regulatory framework is an impediment to the strategic autonomy of the European Union.

The operators’ managers have “underlined the importance of policies favorable to investment, scale and innovation in digital networks”, based on the official assertion issued by Connect Europe. For trade leaders, solely by means of a coherent EU framework can European ambitions for digital management and sustainability be supported. The request is evident: Brussels should enable operators to achieve dimension to have the ability to face the very excessive prices concerned within the deployment of actual 5G and the evolution of fiber networks, particularly in an atmosphere the place rivals from the US and China function in far more consolidated markets.

A change within the competitors guidelines

The focus of the assembly has been on competitors coverage, an space that falls immediately below the duty of Teresa Ribera. The Spanish vp faces the problem of updating guidelines that date again to 2004 and 2008, designed for a standard phone market that has little to do with the present digital ecosystem.

Brussels has already launched a assessment of those guidelines in order that merger evaluations have in mind new strategic components. Among them, the capability for innovation, the resilience of infrastructure, the brand new protection and safety atmosphere, and the worldwide weight of the ensuing companies stand out. The trade argues that the Commission’s strategy in latest many years, targeted nearly completely on sustaining low client costs within the brief time period by means of the proliferation of small operators, has undermined the monetary capability of huge European teams to spend money on main networks.

During the assembly with Roberta Metsola, the CEOs reaffirmed their dedication to working intently with the European Parliament to make sure that world-class digital infrastructure continues to help the continent’s competitiveness. Business leaders insisted that connectivity isn’t just a service, however the spine of Europe’s long-term strategic sovereignty.

The results of this summit will undoubtedly set the tone for the laws that can be introduced on January 20. The sector hopes that the ultimate doc displays the sensitivity proven by Ribera and Metsola within the face of a shared analysis: with out scale there isn’t any funding, and with out funding Europe runs the danger of turning into a secondary participant within the world digital financial system.