At the Luxembourg meeting on 11 June 2009, the telecoms ministers decided to reject the telecom package in the form adopted by the European Parliament in the second reading on 6 May 2009, thus proposing a new round of negotiations.
The ministers consider the Parliament has breached the earlier compromise reached with the Council on the telecoms package as a whole, obviously the main issue under question being the controversial issue of copyright protection and users' rights. And with the new decision of the French Constitutional Council against the French three strikes law, the European Parliament will probably insist in its position.
On a press conference on 11 June, the position of the European Commission was expressed by Viviane Reding's spokesman Martin Selmayr who stated that the issue of Amendment 138 had been dealt with at the national level (thus referring to the French Constitutional Council decision) and therefore should no longer be a European matter. Which, obviously, means that the Commission wants the amendment dropped from the telecom package.
Reding, which has lately been supporting France's position for the graduate response, made an appeal to EU lawmakers urging them to finalise the discussions on the package. "I call on all political players to do their best in the next days and weeks to settle the last pending issue. Critics often lament about Europe's lack of competitiveness, because of the alleged length of the EU's decision-making processes. In the next days and weeks, Council and Parliament have the unique opportunity to prove these critics wrong."
The deadline for the European Parliament to send its position to the Council on the telecoms package is 19 June. After this, there are several options for the telecoms ministers. One is to adopt the text as voted by the Parliament but this is unlikely having in view their position on Amendment 138, especially the position of France in the matter.
Another option is to adopt a counter-proposal restating the Council's initial line which will formally start the negotiation procedure to take place under the new Swedish presidency. In this case, the Parliament will have to create a conciliation committee including 27 newly elected members representing all the EU countries. A formal agreement could be reached by the end of the year.
EU Council could also reopen the entire case asking for negotiations on the core of the text which could lead to other debates with unpredictable duration and results.
A technical possibility could be to split the package but this is unlikely as the ministers have already stated they did not want to take that road. As the text is interlinked, splitting it would mean bringing modifications to a large part of the text.
The European Parliament's schedule is to have a trialogue on 29 September with a final vote on 15 December which would give time for discussion of the issues raised by Amendment 138 and for the new MEPs to get familiarised with these issues.
http://www.edri.org/edri-gram/number7.12/telecom-ministers-reject-package
