Draft BEREC Guidelines for the notification template pursuant to article 12, paragraph 4 of Directive 2018/1972 of the European Parliament and of the Council

Document number: BoR (19) 113

Document date: 14-06-2019

Date of registration: 19-06-2019

Document type:
Author: BEREC

During its 39th plenary meeting (12-14 June 2019, Ghent) the Board of Regulators has approved the draft BEREC Guidelines for the notification template as in article 12, paragraph 4 EECC for public consultation.

The newly introduced European Electronic Communications Code (hereinafter “EECC”) confirms the present EU legislator’s approach to the administrative regime for market entry in the electronic communications sector, as outlined in the Authorisation Directive (Directive 2002/20/EC). This means that the general authorisation system still constitutes the EU framework of reference regulating access to the market for undertakings wishing to provide electronic communications networks and services.

Within such framework, the EECC still acknowledges the notification of the beginning of activity to the NRA or other competent authority as the only requirement that Member States might legitimately envisage for ECN or ECS providers subject to the general authorisation framework.

Compared to article 3 of the current Authorisation Directive, bearing an illustrative list of information potentially includable in a notification form, the EECC now introduces in article 12, paragraph 4, an exhaustive list of such pieces of information.

In this context, BEREC is called to “publish guidelines for the notification template” and to set up, by December 2020, an EU database of the notifications transmitted to the competent authorities.

To this end, BEREC built on previous work carried out in 2013 with a view to simplifying notification fulfilments for cross-border operators and adapted those reflections to the new legal context of reference.

The present draft Guidelines are therefore meant to ensure the implementation of article 12, paragraph 4 of the EECC, thereby contributing to achieving consistent notification-related requirements throughout the Union, to the benefit of the single market.

All stakeholders are invited to submit their inputs by 28 August 2019 17:00 CET to [email protected]. Please see the consultation questions in the very last section of the draft guidelines. Contributions should preferably be submitted in English. 

In accordance with the BEREC policy on public consultations, BEREC will publish a summary of all received contributions. All contributions will be published on the BEREC website, taking into account requests for confidentiality. Any such requests should clearly indicate which information is considered confidential.