Telecommunications (Hansard, 21 June 1994)

§ Mr. McLoughlin

The Council confirmed in principle the common position on the draft open network provision —ONP—voice telephony directive that it had adopted on 30 June 1993, following the failure of the conciliation procedure with the European Parliament, adopting none of the amendments to the common position proposed by the European Parliament. There was no general agreement on the two proposed decisions on trans-European networks for integrated services digital networks—TEN-ISDN —which will be considered further by the Committee of Permanent Representatives—COREPER. The Council adopted conclusions on the Commission's fourth annual report on the implementation of Euro-ISDN and a resolution on the co-ordination of activity on interchange of data between Administrations—IDA. A number of problems remained unresolved on the proposed decision on IDA, particularly on costs, finance, the list of projects and the committee structure. The decision was referred back to COREPER for further discussion.

Commissioner Bangemann reported orally on the work of his group of "prominent persons" on information infrastructure. The report of the group will be published shortly and will emphasise the importance of increased competition in telecommunications as well as the need for market-led investment from private sources, rather than new Community funding. The report will be presented to the European Council in Corfu on 24–26 June, possibly with specific recommendations from the Commission.

The Council agreed conclusions setting out the next steps on standards for advanced television and invited the Commission to draft an article on conditional access for pay television to be included in a draft directive on standards. The text of a draft Council resolution on development of digital broadcasting was agreed. The Commission made brief presentations on the Green Paper on mobile and personal communications and the draft 83W directives on mutual recognition of telecommunications and satellite licences. There was a short debate on postal services; the Commission noted that further work was needed on the development of a European terminal dues system which should ideally be completed in advance of the forthcoming Universal Postal Union conference in Seoul in the autumn. The Commission undertook to use its good offices to assist in this process and also reaffirmed its commitment to produce proposals on universal service, reserved services and technical standards in line with the February 1994 Council resolution.

No formal votes were taken at the Council.