The European Commission may delay by one year, until January 1992, the liberalisation of the European telecommunications market controversially mandated by the Commission without a vote by invocation of an obscure clause in the Treaty of Rome. The Commission initially wants to open up the market for home banking and electronic trading; and competition commissioner Sir Leon Brittan had said that the monopolies of telex and voice telecommunications that operate in most member nations will be reviewed in January 1992. France is leading the protests against deregulation by seeking support from the European Court of Justice, ostensibly on the grounds that government from Brussels by fiat creates a dangerous precedent; some European companies complain that EC firms face unfair competition in the light of protective tariffs that operate in Japan and the United States. Ironically, the loudest voices on the issue of sovereignty raised by the Commission’s unilateral move are from France, West Germany, Belgium and Italy, with the UK staying on the sidelines, which suggests that Mrs Thatcher’s speech in Bruges deriding the proposals of Commission president Jacques Delors struck a much louder chord in Paris, Bonn and Rome than member governments are prepared openly to admit.
