European guidelines for telecom market regulation: results of public consultation

The Commission published today the results of the public consultation to revise the European guidelines helping national telecoms regulators decide when to intervene in telecoms markets. This is an important step to update the guidelines as soon as possible, since the previous guidelines were adopted in 2002 and do not reflect anymore the recent European case laws. The consultation collected responses from the National Regulatory Authorities, service providers and other stakeholders on the review of the Significant Market Power Guidelines: 54 stakeholders from 22 Member States provided input, in particular on market definition as well as single and joint significant market power. The Commission will present the draft guidelines to the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC) this year. Once BEREC will give its comments on the draft, the Commission will finalise and adopt the guidelines in the first half of 2018. The updated guidelines anticipate also the implementation of the new European Electronic Communications Code, as the proposed provisions for the market analysis take into account the current situation on the national markets. The European Electronic Communications Code together with the guidance are key elements for building strong digital infrastructure for the Digital Single Market. Results of the public consultation are available here. More details on the Digital Single Market state of play are available in an overview factsheet and a timeline of the Commission’s digital proposals.