Telecommunications Markets in the Stranglehold of EU Regulation: On the need for a disaggregated regulatory contract

In this paper the design and implementation of a disaggregated regulatory contract onthe statutory level (EU Directives and national law) is derived, which should be an essential principle in the EU Review 2006. Its basic components consist of limiting regulation to monopolistic bottlenecks, exploiting the phasing-out potentials, and a disaggregated application of regulatory instruments. In contrast, the problem of opportunistic regulatory behaviour with respect to irreversible investments can be solved by the application of the already existing statutory constraint of the Framework Directive guaranteeing financial viability.