madam president i welcome the agreement on the telecoms package because this agreement brings in its wake another agreement on a less discussed issue the repeal of the gsm directive
the mobile telephony industry has been understandably very anxious to get access to the radio spectrum bandwidth currently reserved for gsm in order to maintain its global competitiveness
however meps were anxious to ensure that democratic accountability over use of the spectrum was maintained
previous spectrum-related pieces of legislation such as the mobile satellite services decision have shown that many issues said by the commission to be technical do in fact have a political side to them
what is technical may in fact affect principles of cohesion and access for everybody
so i welcome the fact that through the telecoms package meps will now retain scrutiny of spectrum allocation
i will be voting for the telecoms package but i do so with a certain reluctance because i believe there has been a fundamental betrayal at the highest level of the basic principle of the telecoms liberalisation that this directive was supposed to achieve
i am referring to the words in article eight about ensuring access to incumbents and their approach to the market
it seems to me that the deal that was done on this wording in a private conversation between prime minister gordon brown and chancellor merkel has given incumbents such as deutsche telekom a huge advantage
we do not know what prime minister brown got in return
i am afraid that private deals by leaders behind closed doors are not the way to make eu legislation
i regret that this occurred
