In a rebuff to the European Parliament, the European Union Telecommunications Council of Ministers has reaffirmed its backing of a draft Directive to apply Open Network Provision principles to speech telephony, Reuters reports. The Directive aims to harmonise conditions for access to public telecommunications infrastructure, and imposes rules or objectives in areas such as tariffs, contracts and billing. Chief of its goals is to ensure that users, including new service providers, can access the voice telephone networks controlled by national telecommunications organisations in a non-discriminatory and transparent way. The Telecommunications Council’s move means that the directive will become law unless the European Parliament rejects the text by an absolute majority of its members. However, the European Community is unhappy with the Council’s affirmation, as, it says, it was not unanimously agreed by all members; rather European Union officials have said that the decision to back the directive will be adopted as an A, non-discussion, point at a future Council meeting. The draft directive rejects amendments that had been agreed by both the European Community and Parliament. These primarily covered improved consumer protection and increasing openness of decisions by telephone operators to refuse network access. The European Community says that it reserves the right to go to the European Court of Justice if the amendments are not heeded.
