The European Community competition commissioner Karel Van Miert is endorsing proposals – bitterly contested in the more state corporatist member countries – for breaking up national telephone monopolies by 1998 to free markets for calls both within and between member states; the idea of an interim deregulation that would affect only transborder traffic has now been abandoned; the UK is the only Community member open to phone call competition; Denmark will follow suit next year and the Netherlands is expected to move as well; Van Miert wants the Community to set liberalisation priorities and a timetable by year end, including proposals for regulatory changes by the end of 1994, with market-opening to start in 1995.
