11.10.2018

Today at the Public Debriefing in Brussels, BEREC Chair Johannes Gungl presented the outcomes of the Plenary Meeting in Portorož, Slovenia. He also invited all stakeholders to share their points of view in public consultations.

BEREC Work Programme 2019

BEREC aims to ensure the independent, consistent and high-quality application of the European regulatory framework for electronic communications for the benefit of Europe and its citizens by drawing on the expertise of national regulatory authorities across the EU. The objectives of the BEREC Work Programme 2019 are certainly based on the mandatory tasks falling to BEREC in light of the new European Electronic Communications Code (EECC), but BEREC continues to look forward, drawing on its Medium-Term Strategy 2018-2020 to identify and address issues for the future. The scope and scale of the new Work Programme illustrates the level of work not just in the next twelve months but, indeed, over the next two years.

In 2019 and 2020, BEREC will develop in total twelve guidelines, for example one on the criteria a network has to fulfil to be considered a very high capacity networks, one to assess the sustainability of the domestic pricing model or an update to the BEREC Guidelines on Net Neutrality.

The Work Programme 2019 reflects BEREC’s commitment to serve as a body for thoughtful and proactive debate and advice for the European Parliament, the Council and the European Commission in the electronic communications field. Furthermore, BEREC’s future aims are to play an important role in further improving the consistent application of regulatory rules, to enhance its working methodology and to engage collaboratively and effectively with stakeholders.

Today, the Draft BEREC Work Programme 2019 goes into public consultation. The final adoption of the Work Programme is planned for December 2018. In addition to the public consultation, stakeholders will also be given the opportunity to discuss the Work Programme during the Stakeholder Forum on 17 October 2018.

Data Economy

Johannes Gungl invited stakeholders to take part as well in a public consultation on data economy. For example, BEREC wants to find out, how the data economy will affect the market of electronic communications services (ECS) and identify potential bottlenecks. Also of interests are leverage of market power and conglomerate effects, other potential competition issues derived from the use of data as well as opportunities and risks for consumers.

“The role of data has become increasingly relevant in most sectors of the economy. The telecommunications sector is no exception,” Johannes Gungl said. “Especially given its growing interactions with other sectors, which are at the core of the data economy. BEREC considers it important to study the implications, which come from the data economy.”

Contractual Simplification

“Consumers often find it difficult to understand their contracts of electronic communications services. We wanted to make it easier for them by simplifying the information and highlighting the most important parts of the contract,” the BEREC Chair said.

The “BEREC Report on contractual simplification” will help to reach this goal. It is a collation of information of the practices and initiatives in Member States to advise on key elements of contracts between consumers and providers of publicly available ECS.

The report is now open for public consultation and will eventually also serve as a basis for a submission that BEREC has to deliver to the EC next year in preparation for the implementation of the single European contract information sheet.

A full list of public documents adopted at the plenary meetings is available on the BEREC website. The next BEREC plenary meetings will be held in Prague, Czech Republic on 6-7 December 2018.