Ever closer union… A core group of European countries could finally catch up with the UK and end all telephone monopolies together in 1998 and allow more cautious members to delay competition for up to two years, German Post Minister Wolfgang Boetsch said yesterday: Germany and France, the Community’s biggest phone markets, would then join the UK, open for a decade, at the heart of a modern European telecommunications industry with open competition; others, such as Belgium and Luxembourg could take part and the entire initiative would get a boost when the Union is widened next year to include Austria, Norway, Sweden and Finland – With the exception of Norway, the Scandinavian markets are already largely open to competition and could fuel the opening to markets on the European continent, he told Reuter in an interview – The more that I think about it the more I believe it would be better for service providers as well as the monopolies if both markets were opened at the same time, Boetsch added.
