State Aid for Broadband

With municipalities becoming increasingly involved in the development of local broadband and FTTH networks, the Commission published a set of guidelines for the application of state aid rules to broadband networks. Stating EC Treaty provisions and jurisprudence for encouraging the deployment of (high-speed) broadband, it provides a check list for any public/private initiative to assess future investment in new networks in remote or urban areas.

CISAC Antitrust Case

The Commission has issued in January 2006 a Statement of objections against CISAC (the International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers) as the European Institution considers that exclusivity and territoriality restrictive clauses contained in the CISAC's model for reciprocal agreements on Copyright collective managementc might infringe the EC Treaty's prohibition on restrictive business practices (art. 81 Treaty).

Commitments to avoid a competition infringement decision have been made by CISAC. All interested parties have been invited to market test these commitments.

The Commission has now decided that these practices were anticompetitive.

The decision prohibits membership restrictions which prevent authors from choosing which collecting society they want to represent them.

The decision also prohibits the territorial exclusivity clause that prevents a collecting society from offering licences to commercial users outside a given territory as such a clause restricts competition among collecting societies, and forces users to deal with a monopoly provider in each territory.

Finally, the decision prohibits a concerted practice between collecting societies according to which the collecting societies limit their mandates to the domestic territory of the other collecting societies, as a concerted practice which limits the right to grant licences to domestic territories is illegal.

Almost all collecting societies members of the CISAC have appealed the Commission's decision.