The EU’s Directive on the European Electronic Communications Code (“EECC”), entering into effect on 21 December 2020, revises the regulatory framework in the telecommunications sector, responding to the market changes and the connectivity demands and challenges. As with every EU Directive, Member States are required to transpose the EU law into their respective national laws.
While many Member States already enacted the EECC implementing laws, a number of countries, namely Spain, Croatia, Latvia, Lithuania, Ireland, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia and Sweden have still not completed their implementation process even after the end of the transposition deadline. On 6 April 2022, the European Commission decided to refer these ten Member States to the Court of Justice of the EU (“CJEU”) for failing to fully transpose and communicate how the national measures would transpose the EECC. The CJEU will be now reviewing the cases and each Member State listed may be subject to financial sanctions for failing to transpose this EU law.
Businesses are therefore well advised to ensure their compliance with the EECC (and enacting national legislation), and keep abreast of the likely introduction of new implementing legislation from those remaining Member States. To facilitate this exercise, Squire Patton Boggs has developed a series of tools to help ensure compliance with the regulatory requirements under the EECC.
If you have any questions regarding the above, please feel free to contact Francesco Liberatore, James Konidaris or Christina Economides.