Connect Europe supports competitiveness-driven policies as EU ministers meet to discuss resilient networks

As the European Commission continues its crucial work on the upcoming Digital Networks Act, Connect Europe calls for Member States to support a competitiveness and resilience-driven reform of our telecoms policies. Increased investment in the telecoms sector as well as more support for European innovation in the connectivity ecosystem are key levers for achieving reliable and resilient connectivity. This, in turn, is crucial to ensure Europe’s competitiveness and strategic autonomy.

With Ministers meeting to discuss the Council conclusions, Connect Europe supports:

• Regulatory reform to unlock private investment and strengthen EU competitiveness. Deepening the Single Market for electronic communications through the removal of cross-border barriers, deeply simplifying our rulebook and deregulating wherever appropriate, ensuring more harmonization notably in spectrum assignment with longer license duration will all drive the roll-out and strengthen reliable and resilient connectivity, while improving the investment incentives.

• Building resilience requires significant investment, both private and public. Where there is no market or no sufficient private capital available, public funding should also be mobilized to support critical infrastructure (e.g., hardware redundancy, energy back-ups, …).

• Addressing infrastructure bottlenecks. Submarine cables, vital to Europe’s connectivity, continue to face long permitting delays for repairs—posing a real risk to network stability. We urge the creation of a faster, more coordinated permitting system across the EU to enable swift response to outages. Similarly, competitive bottlenecks in the cloud market should be addressed and alternative cloud offerings should be promoted. In addition, the Connecting Europe Facility Digital has strengthened EU digital autonomy by complementing private investments in networks, including submarine cables and backbone. Adequate EU funding in this field should be foreseen also for the future.

• Supporting EU-driven collaboration on new technologies like satellite Direct-to-Device. Integration of diverse connectivity services hold great potential to complement terrestrial networks. Their successful rollout depends on close collaboration between satellite providers, mobile operators and device manufacturers. However, to ensure that the interest of European society and fair competition are protected, it is equally crucial that all providers, including those from third countries, comply with EU regulatory frameworks.