Monti report proposes more centralised regulation

In an announcement somewhat overshadowed by EU finance ministers’ agreement on a €500bn package for member states with solvency problems and to provide support to the euro as a currency, as well as in the UK by the will they-won’t they tea dance going on in Whitehall as I write, former European Commissioner Mario Monti has presented a report to current EU President, Jose Manual Barroso, on a new strategy and direction for the EU’s single market.

Monti was commissioned to write the report back in October 2009, and its aim is to motivate a renewed political determination around the concepts of the EU’s single market and to provide a fresh impetus for the principles which underpin it. What seems to be high up in the Commission’s thinking is the need to assess the state of play in the single market in time for the 20th anniversary of its establishment, in 1992, while the context is also clearly rooted in fears for the direction and commercial success of the EU associated with any retreat into economic nationalism arising from national-level responses to the economic and financial crisis. The report will be the basis for a Commission initiative to relaunch the Single Market as a key strategic objective and, following internal discussion, the Commission will emerge with a ‘balanced, broad and fair’ vision of what the single market should look like in the future some time in July.

This is a hugely significant report and the timing of the announcement of the publication could not be worse (though this is unlikely to inhibit a serious discussion in time of the report’s focus). The thrust of the Monti report is that a system of national regulators sees to it that the EU ‘falls short of its commercial promise‘ in the communications and e-commerce areas, and that the response should be for the EU to have stronger powers over national regulators. Some of the conclusions – for example on an EU-wide spectrum licencing regime – look somewhat behind the play given the round of advanced spectrum auctions which have been concluded in the Netherlands and in the Nordic countries, and are currently well underway in Germany. But what looks inescapable is Monti’s views on the need for a revision of regulation in the communications sector so as to create an EU-wide market for electronic and communications and to drive the growth of Europe’s digital economy.

Given the recent conclusion (in 2009) to the last round of revision of telecoms regulation at EU level, the sigh of ‘here we go again’ is equally inescapable. Nevertheless, this is a report that will need serious consideration, both in terms of its political significance as well as in terms of the impact of the measures that it proposes will have on workers in the sector.