EU: Telecoms Text Agreement

After months of negotiations, agreement has finally been reached between the European Parliament and the Council in the Conciliation Committee on the telecoms directive (formerly known as the ISDN directive). The directive is designed to safeguard privacy and personal information in the context of an open market in telecommunications services. Manuel Medina Ortega (E, PES), the author of the EP’s original opinion, will this week recommend that MEPs approve the compromise agreement that has been reached. The agreement covers telephone tapping, where Medina Ortega is now satisfied that there are sufficient legal safeguards to guarantee the confidentiality of communications while ensuring that public order or national security is not endangered. In addition, the Parliament has been able to convince the Council that telecoms operators should only charge subscribers wishing to have their names omitted from telephone directory listings for the actual administrative costs that they have incurred in doing so and not for the much larger costs that had originally been proposed. A satisfactory agreement was also reached on the degree of protection that all subscribers should have from unsolicited calls as received in direct marketing.

The new Directive sets out to supplement the general Directive on data protection adopted in 1995, in response to the special requirements of and the technical possibilities inherent in telecommunications networks, particularly digital networks (whether fixed or mobile).