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Tuesday, January 19, 2010

European Commission delayed until March - Kroes safe?

The withdrawal of a dodgy Bulgarian candidate means that the Parliament will not ratify a new Commission until 9 February at the earliest - and that means new Commissioners will not take office until early March. Easter is a long weekend at the end of March so don't expect much out of Brussels before April.
Meanwhile, I didn't blog about Nellie Kroes' under-preparation and apparent competition economics-based anti-intervention bias at her public hearing last week (listen from about 55mins in) - I am guessing she's still thinking as Competition Commissioner as the busiest of all Commissioners, and just under-prepared and did not anticipate an ambush.
She did make a fairly important statement about VoIP blocking and other net neutrality concerns, and we'll see whether that provides her with political capital to shake up the mobile sector. She said that ISPs "shouldn't be allowed to limit the access to service or content out of commercial motivation, but only in cases of security issues and spamming".

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