16 member states continue to defy EU telecoms rules

The European Commission has written to the countries in question

The European Commission (EC) has written to 16 EU member states threatening legal action if they continue to defy a directive to make new EU telecoms rules into national law.

In July of this year, the EC revealed that 20 member states were yet to implement the changes, but only four (Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg and Slovakia) have notified the Commission of their full implementation since then.

Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia and Spain are yet to inform the EC of plans to implement the directive.

The EU telecoms rules came into force on 25 May 2011. They place additional requirements on telecoms operators to enable customers to switch providers within a day and demand that ISPs be clear about data traffic management principles.

Those member states that continue to ignore the EC's request to fully implement the new laws run the risk of referral to the EU's Court of Justice. They could face financial penalties.

Only seven countries, including the UK, met the 25 May deadline to implement the changes in full.

Matthew Howett, analyst at Ovum, spoke to Computing in July when the initial list of 20 countries was released by the EC. He explained that it should not come as a surprise that some member states are defiant.

"If you look at the transposition of the previous telecoms framework in 2002, there was an equally long list of countries not implementing the rules," said Howett.

"This process can drag on for years, and there are always the traditional offenders who do it very late, not properly or not at all."

Howett explained that it took as much as three years for some countries to implement the changes when the last EU telecoms rules were passed down to member states.