Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-05-23-Speech-3-031"
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"en.20070523.3.3-031"2
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"It is a fundamental principle that it is not the European Union’s task to regulate prices everywhere in the market. However, the basic treaty gives us the ability, as well as the responsibility, to protect consumers and to ensure that the market operates and that we have fair and open competition. In this case, we have, for many years, received very clear signals from despairing parents with children studying abroad, from older people who have not read the small print in their telephone agreements and also from parts of the industry, complaining that this market does not operate. It is neither transparent nor fair.
That is why we have been working on the roaming issue since we were elected to the European Parliament three years ago. The problem was addressed as long ago as during our first discussion with Commissioner Reding. For a period of three years, we – the Commissioner, the Council and Parliament – have together tried, through price comparisons and open recommended prices – to ensure that the market voluntarily corrects the shortcomings that exist. It has not done so. The major distortions have remained unchanged. This legislative proposal therefore comes as no surprise, and I welcome it because it is our task to ensure that we have proper competition in the internal market. Our task is to take strategic and systematic decisions that prepare the way for an open market function, and I hope that, in the course of the next three years, the industry will ensure that it changes its business methods and reports on, and clarifies, the price situation for its customers. I hope too that it does so in such a way that this three-year legislation is a one-off phenomenon and that we might subsequently be able to refrain from this kind of intervention in the market.
I want to say thank you for the cooperation we have enjoyed between the political groups and with the Commission and for the work that has led to what I consider to be, in general, sensible legislation."@en1
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