Maltese European Parliamentarian Joseph Muscat will vote against his own parliamentary report for a second time should the agreed text lean too heavily in favour of big business.
Speaking to The Malta Independent on Sunday Joseph Muscat, rapporteur of the parliament’s Internal Market and Consumer Protection Committee’s roaming position paper, commented, “I have done it once and will do it again. I honestly think that if there is not a good deal on the table, I will vote against it.”
The European Parliament is to take its final vote on the Council of Ministers’ proposals to cut the charges for making and receiving mobile phone calls abroad, on 10 May. Malta’s mobile operators currently levy some of the highest roaming rates in the EU.
On the lead up to the forthcoming vote, Mr Muscat warned, “We might have some surprises. Next week we are having more discussions and we could actually end up not having a regulation for the time being because there might not be an agreement between us, as Parliament, and the Council.
“I feel free to say this because some of our colleagues in the Council and Parliament have made comments, even though we had agreed not to.”
The mobile telephony industry has been lobbying hard against the Commission’s proposals. The Commission itself has been accused on more than one occasion of buckling under the pressure of Europe’s strong mobile industry.
Mr Muscat added, “The deal that Council is proposing is skewed so much in favour of the industry, actually not so much the industry but rather in favour of big business, that it would undermine not only consumers but also the smaller operators.”
He does not, however, dispel the possibility that a satisfactory deal will be struck in the end.
He added, “I voted against my own report and that led to an outcry in the international media which, in turn, led to significant pressure being put on many other members. As such, in the second vote (on 12 April) everything had been changed back to what I had originally proposed, and now Parliament’s position is essentially what I had first tabled.
“If I had in one way or another compromised by getting a half-baked solution, I would have been an accomplice to a parody of consumer protection, and there is no way that I am going to let that happen.”