Roaming surcharges within the EU should end one day, but we do not know when exactly. For the time being, European citizens will continue to pay roaming surcharges abroad at least until 2020 and even further, despite the fact that European medias have frequently reported, in the last months, about the imminent end of international roaming.
In April 2014 the European Parliament, amending the Single Telecom Market (“STM”) of Commissioner Kroes, proposed to definitively abolish roaming surcharges by end of 2015. The Parliament’s proposal was then submitted to the Council, i.e. the body that within the European Union represents the governments of the Member States, however an agreement was not found until now. A next meeting of the Council is scheduled for November 27, 2014, however most signals indicate that the national governments will just discuss about the progress of the negotiations, while no decision is expected to be taken.
In the meanwhile, there was a leak from the Presidency of the Commission, namely a letter sent by president Junker to all EU commissioners in which each of them was required “to examine all pending proposals in [your] area and to signal those which we should review together, for example because they have no realistic chance of being adopted in the near future, or because the degree of ambition achievable does not match the objectives sought.” Many observers have recognized that such kind of instructions will likely bring to the withdrawal of the STM proposal, including the roaming reform.
