Europe sluggish in adoption of European Electronic Communications Code

In late 2018, the European Union’s new EECC finally came into force, giving member states two years to incorporate the new framework into law. The EECC is designed to help modernise national regulator frameworks, bringing them ‘up to date with the new challenges’, and has been called essential for the full participation of all EU citizens in the digital economy. 

 

However, despite this imperative laid out by the EU, just three member states – Greece, Hungary and Finland – had notified the European Commission (EC) that they had successfully incorporated the EECC into national legislature. This left 24 EU members who had failed to enact the EECC into legislature, resulting in the sending EC sending them formal letters of notice.

 

“Today, the Commission opened infringement procedures against 24 Member States for failing to enact new EU telecom rules,” said the Commission, noting that these 24 countries will have two months to adopt the relevant measures and formally respond.

 

The countries notified of their infringement are Belgium, Bulgaria, Czechia, Denmark, Germany, Estonia, Ireland, Spain, France, Croatia, Italy, Cyprus, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Austria, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Slovakia, and Sweden.

 

To what extent the EC can really punish these member states for not acting fast enough is unclear, but it should be noted that most countries on this list are in the process of adopting the EECC principles in some way. France, for example has said that it will implement the EECC by executive orders by June, while Germany drafted new telecommunications laws in December 2020 that include the EECC and will come into effect in summer this year.

 

As so often with national governments, the wheels of bureaucracy turn slowly, but most of the countries in Europe are generally moving in the same direction when it comes to implementing the EECC.