"The ministers already agree that the new body is not acceptable," explained a source from the Slovenian EU Presidency, which will chair the meeting.
The Council will instead propose to simply strengthen the functions of the European Regulators Group (ERG), made up by the authorities from the 27 members.
The move echoes the line taken by the European Parliament. A report, which has already gathered cross-party support and on which the assembly is due to vote in July, calls for a stronger ERG instead of a new Community body. In Parliament's view, the strengthened inter-governmental ERG should be renamed BERT, the 'Body of European Regulators in Telecoms' (see EurActiv 25/04/08).
The Council is expected to substantially approve this proposal and request the extension of a mandate for ENISA, the temporary European Network and Information Security Agency whose mandate expires in March 2009.
The Commission wanted ENISA to disappear and be merged with the new authority by 2011. The Council should instead ask for a three-year extension of its functions until 2012.
Parliament's Industry Committee, which has the lead on the issue, last week made the same request as the Council. The plenary is due to confirm this line in a vote next week. "We already have an informal agreement with the Parliament," the Slovenian diplomatic source made clear.
On the other hand, EU ministers should give their backing to Commission proposals on radio spectrum and, above all, accept the remedy of functional separation proposed by the EU executive to increase competition in some markets. This means that once the new legal framework is in place, national regulators will be able to force former state-run telecoms operators, such as Telefonica or France Telecom, to split their network management operations from their service activities, under certain circumstances.
"We drafted a new compromise text which got broad support from the states. The proposal for functional separation is still in," explained the Slovenian Presidency representative.
