The full force of competition law …

Posted on August 2, 2007 | Filed Under communication technologies 

Commissioner Viviane Reding today presented a website to benchmark how mobile operators in all 27 Member States have applied the Roaming Regulation. In the press release Reding welcomed “that many operators offered the new Eurotariff as the holiday season began” and concluded that the “interplay between regulation and the voluntary anticipation of the regulated tariffs by industry appears to benefit consumers”.

So we can rest relieved, although

“in a few cases – the exception rather than the rule – we [Reding’s pluralis majestatis] note attempts to delay the effects of the regulation by non-transparent or possibly even anti-competitive behaviour. These will have to be analysed very carefully by national and European regulators. If we find evidence for behaviour that violates the law, the EU Roaming Regulation foresees sanctions which could be complemented by the full force of competition law.” [emphasis added]

Wow! Judging from past experience in the application of competition law to international roaming, this is not what one would call “credible threats” in regulation theory.

So we will see how the full “force of this commission” (Shakespeare, King Henry VIII, Act I, Scene 2) will work out this time. Is this a Commission “against whose fury and unmatched force / the aweless lion could not wage the fight” (King John, Act I, Scene 1), or can operators rest assured that “her feeble force will yield at length” (The Passionate Pilgrim, Sonnet XIX)?

Since the Roaming Regulation is a prestige public relations legislation project of the Commission, this time I do believe that operators will have to comply; as Shakespeare wrote in Richard II (Act III, Scene 3):

For do we must what force will have us do.

PS: “What is decreed must be, and be this so.” (Twelfth Night, Act I Scene 5)

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