Today, July 12, 2006, the National Regulatory Authority for Communications (ANRC), in collaboration with the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, opened the public consultation on a draft ordinance aimed at creating the cooperation mechanisms with the European Commission and with the regulatory authorities of the Member States, necessary upon accession.
Thus, in view of Romania’s accession to the European Union at the beginning of 2007, the project includes provisions regarding institutional cooperation at European level. These provisions create a mechanism for notification of the European Commission and the regulatory authorities of the Member States of the national regulatory measures that affect the single market. ANRC will use this mechanism of cooperation with the European institutions in order to ensure harmonised and coherent regulations for the electronic communications sector within the European Union.
The project also makes provisions for the postal sector, removing the barrier to market entry of the authorised natural persons, who are to enjoy the same rights as the legal persons with respect to the provision of postal services.
Also, both for the field of electronic communications and that of postal services, in order to facilitate market entry, the draft proposes a simplified general authorisation procedure, by removing the provision regarding the 7- and, respectively, the 45-day term of sending the notification prior to starting operation. Effective operation could start once the notification has been sent. As regards the term for obtaining an individual licence in the field of postal services, this will be reduced to 30 days, from the current 90 days-term. Moreover, the precondition of having the quality of postal service provider at the moment of submitting the request for an individual licence is proposed to be repealed.
This project approaches also the monitoring tariff owed by the communications providers, who are to perform, into the account of the monitoring tariff, anticipated payments on March 15 and June 15 of every year, after which the final amount of the monitoring tariff is to be calculated by ANRC before September, 15 of every year.
Further completions to the procedure of calculation and payment of the monitoring tariff refer to the possibility that the monitoring tariff be charged according only to the limited period in a calendar year during which a person holds the quality of a provider, in case of cessation of the provision of communications services. The draft ordinance also provides for the possibility to exempt from the payment of the monitoring tariff the providers that register a turnover below a certain level, established on a yearly basis, thus encouraging the development of the providers featuring a small turnover, and minimising the administrative costs born by ANRC.
The draft ordinance under public consultation also includes provisions according to which the minimum and the maximum levels of contravention fines are to be diminished. Thus, the amount of the contravention fines to be enforced for breach of the obligations provided by the special legislation in the filed of electronic communications will range between 500 and 90,000 lei and the companies with a turnover higher than 3,000,000 ROL may receive contravention fines amounting up to 3% of the respective turnover.
The draft ordinance and the accompanying explanatory memorandum are available on the ANRC website. All interested persons are invited to send their suggestions and comments no later than July 24, 2006. Suggestions and comments may be submitted by mail, to the ANRC headquarters (14 Libertatii Blvd., 5th District, Bucharest), directly to the ANRC registration office, or to the closest territorial office of ANRC, by fax to +40 21 307 54 02, or by e-mail to consultare@anrc.ro.