Telecommunications Council

Lord Vaizey of Didcot Excerpts

Thursday 5th June 2014 Written Statements

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Mr Edward Vaizey)]

The Telecommunications Council will take place in Luxembourg on 6 June 2014. I will represent the UK and below are the agenda items and the positions; I intend to adopt each of them.

The first item is a progress report from the presidency on the proposal for a directive of the European Parliament and of the Council concerning measures to ensure a high level of network and information security across the Union. (First Reading—EM6342/13). While no formal debate is scheduled on the agenda it is expected that some member states may wish to intervene. In this instance the UK’s intervention will strongly support the presidency’s progress report and in particular the principles in the report related to information sharing, co-operation and incident reporting, which would allow far more flexibility for member states than the Commission’s original proposal.

The second item is a progress report on the proposal for a regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council laying down measures concerning the European single market for electronic communications and to achieve a connected continent (First Reading—EM13562/13 and 13555/13 + ADDs 1-2). Again, no formal debate is scheduled but should there be interventions, I intend to indicate the UK’s continued support for a simplified regulation and in particular an outcome that leads to the cessation of mobile roaming charges by 2016, along with increased consumer protection. Finally, we will also reiterate our stance, whereby we do not support the proposals that would give the Commission further competency over spectrum management nor those that would result in the introduction of regulation regarding net neutrality.

These items will be followed by a presentation by the Commission on the latest iteration of the digital agenda scoreboard; I do not expect to intervene on this item.

This will be followed by three items under AOB, all updates from the presidency on: the proposal for a regulation from the European Parliament and of the Council on electronic identification and trust services for electronic transactions in the internal market (First Reading—EM10977/12); a regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on measures to reduce the costs of deploying high-speed electronic communication networks (First Reading—EM7999/13); and a proposal for a directive of the European Parliament and of the Council on the accessibility to public sector bodies’ websites (First Reading—EM16006/11). I do not intend to intervene on any of these items.

Finally, the Italian delegation will inform the Council of their priorities for their forthcoming presidency before Council adjourns until the next meeting in November 2014.