The European Commission is to warn eight European Union member states to bring their regulatory regimes for electronic communications into line with common standards or face legal action in the Court of Justice

The European Commission is to warn eight European Union member states to bring their regulatory regimes for electronic communications into line with common standards or face legal action in the Court of Justice. It also stated that within days a group of 25 national regulators would announce co-ordinated action to tackle excessive roaming charges for mobile phones. Vivian Reding, Information Society Commissioner, said that the commission was preparing to launch infringement proceedings against the Czech Republic and Estonia because they had not adopted the necessary national legislation for regulating the IT sector. Legal action was also being prepared against Cyprus, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovenia and Slovakia for not having adopted appropriate secondary legislation, she said. The commissioner, who was speaking at a press conference to present the Commission's 10th annual report on "European electronic communications regulations and markets", said that several member states failed to set up effective regulators for the sector, a key requirement of the legislative package, and this became a major problem. "The commission has concerns that full independence [of national regulatory authorities] has not been achieved", Reding said, adding that some authorities never conducted the market analyses that were a core part of their function. The commissioner was reacting to member states' performance in implementing the EU regulatory framework for electronic communications, which covers fixed and mobile telecommunications. This framework had to be in place by 24 July 2003 for the then 15 EU member states, and by 1 May 2004 for the 10 countries that joined the Union on that date. The commission has already started proceedings in the Court of Justice against Belgium, Greece and Luxembourg for failings on primary legislation and against Spain and France for secondary legislation.