Summary

  • The European Commission says all decisions under Articles 32/33 of the Electronic Communications Code, including Phase I decisions, are now published on CIRCABC; the archive requires no registration.
  • The Commission’s veto is limited to defining the relevant market or assessing significant market power. A serious doubt about proposed remedies can lead to a recommendation instead.

The file is public; the power has edges

On 29 October, the Commission announced that its decisions under Articles 32 and 33 of the European Electronic Communications Code can be read on CIRCABC, including decisions from the first phase of review. It says a monthly overview is published there too, and that readers do not need to register.

The scale is large enough to matter. The Commission says it assesses about 60 to 90 national-regulator notifications each year. After a draft measure arrives, the Commission, the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC) and regulators in other Member States have one month to review it. Most cases end with a “no comments” or “comments” letter.

Only a small number go further. A serious-doubts letter adds two or three months of scrutiny. At that stage, people often talk about “the Commission’s veto” as if Brussels could simply erase a national regulator’s whole plan. The Commission’s own description is narrower: a veto can apply to the definition of the relevant market or to the assessment of significant market power (SMP).

That distinction matters because market definition, SMP and remedies are separate decisions. Under the Commission’s summary, an NRA may identify a product and geographic market, decide whether an undertaking has SMP, then propose obligations to address the competition problem. The Code’s SMP framework asks whether entry barriers are high, whether the market is moving toward effective competition, and whether competition law alone can fix the problem.

If the Commission’s serious doubts concern the proposed remedies, its stated instrument is a recommendation to the national regulator. That is a real intervention, but it is not the same legal stop as a veto over market definition or SMP. Regulators must take the Commission’s comments into utmost account when adopting final decisions; the distinction still tells readers which part of the decision is under review and which part Brussels can block.

What a public archive changes

Before the publication announcement, an interested operator or policy researcher could follow individual consultations and public announcements. A decision archive offers a different tool: compare how the Commission handled similar questions across multiple cases, including the quieter Phase I outcomes that never become headline disputes.

That record can help an operator, investor or regulator ask a sharper question than “Did Brussels object?” Which market definition drew scrutiny? Was SMP designation the issue? Did remedies trigger a recommendation? How long did review take, and what did the national regulator do next? The answers are in the documents the Commission says it has made public, not in the word “veto” alone.

The legal reference is Directive (EU) 2018/1972, the Electronic Communications Code. The Commission’s publication notice describes the archive and review process; the Code supplies the legal framework. The CIRCABC folders linked from the announcement did not load in the research view, so the current number of archived files could not be checked. That inventory is the specific fact still missing.

Sources: European Commission: Article 32/33 decisions; Directive (EU) 2018/1972 on EUR-Lex; European Commission: the Electronic Communications Code.