DETERMINING THE LEVEL OF REGULATION IN EU TELECOMMUNICATIONS - A PRELIMINARY ASSESSMENT

The attention of the EU is currently focused on which aspects of telec ommunications should be regulated at a national and which at a Europea n level, The paper argues that in practice this is not an 'either/or' question, but a question of the degree of regulatory detail at the Eur opean level, The criteria for making choices on this dimension should be the standard ones of efficiency, equity, accountability and (in thi s case) consistency with the single market, The presence of externalit ies favours a central solution, while reliance on local information an d a desire for political accountability favour decentralization, A num ber of possible regulatory frameworks are analysed, including the crea tion of an independent European regulator, In many contexts, some form of policy coordination is preferable to the creation of new centraliz ed institutions. Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd