Berlin blasts EU telecoms overhaul plan

AFP, November, 2007

FRANKFURT (AFP) — A European Commission proposal to overhaul telecommunications controls drew rebuttals Wednesday from German specialists who believe the measures would lead to excessive regulation.

A proposal to create a European regulatory body "goes against the principles of subsidiarity and deregulation," junior economy minister Bernd Pfaffenbach said.

The principle of subsidiarity holds that matters should be dealt with at the closest possible level to the one they effect, to focus decision-making at low levels of power.

A new European body would also be "an irreversable process, we would not be able to abolish it" whereas EU regulatory bodies were supposed to disappear eventually, he added.

The government is backed by former state monopoly...