Report on the outcome of the BEREC electronic voting procedure for the adaption of BEREC Opinion on Art 7 Phase II case DE/2015/1713

On 18 February 2015, the European Commission registered a notification from the German national regulatory authority, BNetzA, concerning Market 1. The Commission initiated a Phase II investigation, pursuant to Article 7a of Directive 2002/21/EC as amended by Directive 2009/140/EC, with a serious doubts letter on 18 March 2015.

In accordance with the BEREC rules of procedure, the Expert Working Group (EWG) was established immediately after that date with the mandate to prepare an independent BEREC Opinion on the justification of the Commission’s serious doubts on the case.

Since this case is very similar to other cases (DE/2013/1430, DE/2013/1460, DE/2014/1642, DE/2014/1660, and DE/2014/1685), the rapporteur decided in agreement with the experts of the EWG  to exercise the work without an initial meeting. Instead, the EWG held a videoconference on 24 March 2015 with the objective of sharing understanding of the notified documents and deciding whether, based on the information available thus far, it could reach clear conclusions on whether or not the Commission’s serious doubts are justified. The EWG reached preliminary conclusions on the issues by analysing the relevant documents. After the comment round, the 2015 BEREC Chair launched the voting round on 27 April, and ended on 28 April 2015 with the approval of the BEREC Opinion.

The current document is part of the internal BEREC decision making procedure and therefore is not available for public. However, the BEREC Opinion on Article 7 Phase II Case DE/2015/1713 approved  as a result of the current electronic voting procedure has been published and can be consulted here.