Brussels/Bonn, 23 April 2025 – Yesterday, the competition authorities of Austria, Netherlands, Belgium, Portugal, Czechia, and Ireland published a joint statement on the importance of competition in the European telecommunications sector.

Alexis Bley, European Public Affairs Manager at the German Broadband Association (BREKO), comments as follows:

“BREKO strongly supports the competition authorities’ differentiated perspective on the debate on consolidation, competition, and competitiveness. This perspective is crucial for future investments in infrastructure deployment, and should receive much more attention in the current debate on the EU’s upcoming Digital Networks Act.

In Germany, over 60 percent of fibre networks have been deployed by alternative operators. This has only become possible due to fair competition in the national telecoms market. Relaxing sector-specific regulation and/or merger rules at this stage would most likely hamper further network deployment and jeopardise the necessary attraction of investments into the sector, for which a fair and predictable regulatory framework is paramount.

We ask the upcoming German federal government and the European Commission to heed the competition authorities’ advice and ensure that the Digital Networks Act will safeguard fair competition in the European telco sector.”