Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2012-05-09-Speech-3-057-000"
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"en.20120509.17.3-057-000"2
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"Mr President, I will continue along the same line as my previous colleagues.
Today, I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, it is true, I recognise in Ms Kroes the kind of liberal I like, a liberal who wants real competition on the market and who challenges all abuse from those in a dominant position. It is not for nothing that you used to be the Commissioner for Competition.
In any case, I would like to thank Angelika Niebler for having made considerable efforts to improve the Commission’s proposal and also to take on these monopolies.
We can therefore, somehow, be pleased, as today we are seeing roaming and data prices on the market which can reach up to 10 000 times the cost price. Imagine that: 10 000 times the cost price! These are obviously extreme examples but they are part of the reality and we will reduce this, over time, to a ratio that will be, broadly speaking, around 50 times the cost price. We can therefore say: ‘Hallelujah! We have gone from a ratio of 10 000 to a ratio of 50 – great progress!’
That being said, tell me, in which truly competitive market are there profit margins like this? How is it possible that, in an economy which is, in principle, a large market economy – a ‘social market economy’, yes, but a market economy nonetheless – we can still find margins like this? In French, it is what we would call a racket! The word is not French but you understand what I am talking about. The regulation that we are putting in place actually helps to keep this racket going. What we have seen in the past is that all the real prices converge at the fixed ceiling. This therefore means that there is no real competition.
I know that the Commission has made many efforts to develop structural measures that lead to real competition, but I agree with Mr Goebbels: how is it possible that these four large groups, which are
present throughout the internal market – we call this an internal market! – behave as though we were 27 impenetrably separated national markets? This is clearly unacceptable.
That is therefore the source of my bitterness with regard to the text that we will vote on tomorrow – we had voted against it in committee to encourage Ms Niebler to go further. However, we must indeed recognise that, if the text that we will adopt represents significant progress, it still has a long, long way to go in terms of consumer protection.
What I am hoping therefore, is that, in fact, as Jens Rohde said, we do not have to rule on new standards again in four years’ time in terms of the price ceiling for roaming. This is not normal. What I want to see is real competition. We saw what happened with
in France. It is an effort at national market level. We need much more competition. The racket that telecommunications and mobile telephone operators practise is a racket that must stop, like all rackets in any self-respecting economy."@en1
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