EU Councils on Roaming, Postal Service Liberalization and Galileo

EU Ministers in charge of telecommunications, transport and energetics will meet in Brussels on Monday and Tuesday in order to discuss the reducing of mobile roaming charges, the liberalization of postal services as well as the implementation of the European satellite navigation system GALILEO.

The EU Council of 25 Telecom Ministers are facing difficult discussions since the roaming prices are currently six times as expensive as prices for national calls, and in some cases they are even surpassing prices of EUR 12 per 4 minutes. The main subject to be discussed will be the Commission proposal of 12 July to bring down mobile roaming charges in Europe’s internal market by 70%.

At the moment, the approximate mobile roaming charges for EU citizens amount up to EUR 4-6 per 4 minutes and sometimes even more.

In Brussels they claim that it was necessary for them to intervene since the telecom operators had ignored their previous invitations to implement reduce prices, although most of the EU citizens are agreeing with those demands.

EU is also expected to reach a political agreement regarding the liberalization of postal services which include the transport of standard mail deliveries.

The EC wants to finalize a liberalization process which has already started in the years 1997 and 2002. The new measures would include the “opening up” of postal services for the transport of letters up to 50 grams of weight.

The GALILEO system is expected to start operating by the year 2011, creating new possibilities for the development of future generations of services in sectors such as transport, telecommunications, agriculture and fishery.

GALILEO will contain a total of 30 satellites marking the end of EU's dependence on the American GPS.

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