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THE STATE OF THE EUROPEAN UNION
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been limited and growth has been slow.
Furthermore, Member States that have backed
its use have created nationally regulated sys-
tems that are not interoperable with the sys-
tems of other Member States.
The lack of regulation in this area was caus-
ing fragmentation between different Member
States with two key consequences. Firstly, it
constitutes an added cost for business, which
needs to adapt to different procedures in order
to provide services across national borders.
Secondly, it reduces the benefits that could be
derived from an interoperable information sys-
tem throughout the European Union. In this
way, e-billing, which was meant to simplify pro-
cesses, was actually becoming a barrier to entry
that obstructed these cross-border services.
To address this problem, Directive 2014/55/
EU on electronic invoicing in public procure-
ment was approved on 16
th
April, establishing
the compulsory acceptance of electronic invoic-
es that comply with the new European stand-
ard, but leaving users free to use other stand-
ards simultaneously in each state, as this
approach has proven to be the best compromise
between harmonization and flexibility.
Outlook for 2015
Following the European elections and the ap-
pointment of Jean-Claude Juncker, the creation
of a single digital market has become one of the
European Commission’s ten priorities. Juncker
has insisted on the need to achieve progress in
the Digital Single Market during the first six
months of his mandate, with more ambitious
measures in the reform of regulations in tele-
communications, copyright and online purchas-
es and services. There must also be progress in
the European data protection law.
We therefore expect a lot of activity at
European level in 2015, particularly with regard
to the single market in telecommunications. In
particular, we can expect that a new Regulation
will start being discussed. Two issues will be par-
ticularly important: roaming and net neutrality.
In respect to roaming, it is important to note
that, while there is a general commitment
among governments and institutions to elimi-
nating such charges, there is a lot of debate
about how to address the issue. Spain and, in
particular, Greece and Cyprus, as net recipients
of tourists, have expressed their opposition to
the complete elimination of roaming charges as
is being proposed. This is due to the fact that
the current draft allocates these costs primarily
to the countries in which these services are pro-
vided. Instead, these countries argue for a rapid
elimination of the surcharge to users but based
on a different division of costs between opera-
tors. The difficulty reaching an agreement in this
area makes it unlikely roaming charges being
fully eliminated in 2015; in fact, the Council has
just postponed this decision until 2018. However
we do still expect a Regulation that will contin-
ue the glidepath of tariff reduction, including a
basic connectivity packet (5 minutes and 5 MB)
for free. These new measures have to be dis-
cussed within the European Institutions, where
a big fight is expected because of the opposed
positions of the Council and the Parliament.
The issue of net neutrality is likely to be an-
other important field in 2015 because of its po-
tential impact on the services offered by tele-
communications operators and the repercussions
these services could have on the internet eco-
system. The recently appointed Vice President
for the Digital Single Market, Andrus Ansip, has
identified this area as one of his priorities. He set
out his intentions in a recent speech, in which
he stated that: “The internet is universal and