‘New’ Governance in European Union Policy Making: Policy Innovation or Political Compromise in European Telecommunications?

Abstract

This article makes a contribution to research on soft or ‘new’ governance in EU policy making by examining the recent history of telecommunications policy as a case study, a sector hitherto not widely recognised for displaying this kind of governance. Training its focus on the process leading to the agreement of the latest iteration of the EU's Electronic Communications Regulatory Framework, the article finds strong evidence that soft governance has been used within hard governance legislative frameworks primarily as a tool of political compromise, in respect of the classic problem of securing a balance of regulatory power distribution between the national and EU level. Soft governance employed in this way casts doubt over its ability to achieve openness, common purpose, innovativeness and regulatory efficacy.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank two anonymous referees for their very helpful comments on an earlier version of the manuscript.

Notes

1. The Commission also publishes annual reports on the state of implementation of the EU telecommunications package which is often openly critical of member states' compliance with agreements made at EU level.

2. In fact, after the European Council's second reading the new organisation was given yet another putative name, the Group of European Regulators in Telecoms (GERT).

3. Examples of these companies with cross-national scope and ambitions are: Bouygues Telecom, BT Global Services, Global Crossing, Orange Business Services, Vodafone and WIND.

4. The other states are Austria, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Ireland, Latvia, Malta, Poland, Portugal and Slovakia.