Plans for European "Super Regulator" Gain Little Support

BRUSSELS (AFP)--European Union plans to set up a European telecommunications watchdog risk being shelved in the absence of support from member states, an official said Tuesday.

"There's not a lot of support for an authority" among member states, the official close to European Union's Slovenian presidency said.

The idea of creating an E.U. ueber-regulator for telecommunications was one of the main planks of a shake-up of the sector that the European Commission proposed in November.

E.U. ministers in charge of telecommunications are due to discuss the package, which aims to fire up competition and make it easier for operators to do cross-border business, on Thursday at a meeting in Luxembourg.

While the idea of a super-regulator was proving "fundamentally unacceptable" for member states, the official said an alternative might be possible by simply boosting the powers of an existing network of national regulators.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

Posted to the site on 10th June 2008