Communications Regulatory Agency (CRAas EMERG Chair 2019, invited the EMERG Members to the Plenary assembly that will be held in Sarajevo on 26 March 2019. According to the EMERG Charter the Plenary’s tasks are:

  • Appointing the new Chairman and the new Vice-Chairman;
  • Appointing the members of the Permanent Secretariat;
  • Establishing Expert Working Groups and appointing their Chair or co-chairs.
  • Approving the Work-plan;
  • Approving the Annual Report and the Benchmark Report of the previous year and decide on their publication on the EMERG Website;
  • Granting membership and/or observer status to candidates;
  • Adopting and amend the EMERG Charter;
  • Adopting and amend its own rules of procedure, as well as those of the Contact Network and the Permanent Secretariat;
  • Discussing regulatory issues and proposals emerging from the benchmarking or working group activities with a view to approximation

The Plenary meeting will agree on the EMERG sustainability after 2020.

Public AGENDA link:

 

 EMERG Work Plan for 2019

The Work Plan 2019 is the result of a comprehensive, transparent and inclusive procedure, aiming at relaunching the EMERG activities, stimulating the participation of the Members and achieving the main strategic goals for the benefit of both sides of the Mediterranean basin.

With the aim to ensure continuity in the workflow over the year, EMERG agreed that two 2019 workshops serve as a follow-up to the two virtual working groups and cover topics of Net Neutrality and International Roaming.

Namely, at the Plenary meeting in Rome in 2017 Members expressed the need to set up two Expert working groups in order to better consolidate a cooperation among the Members, on the specific topics that push for harmonized approaches, such as Net Neutrality and International Roaming. The two groups were officially activated at the Plenary meeting in Cairo in 2018 and as a follow up to these activities, topics have been included in Working Plan 2019.

Workshop 1: Wholesale Regulation of very high capacity networks (VHCNs)

Workshop 2: Net Neutrality

Workshop 3: International Roaming

Workshop 4:  The new role of regulators in the Era of new ecosystem of telecommunications and the new challenges of telecom’s regulation

The Plenary Assembly appointed the Chair for 2020:

Ministry for Telecommunications and IT MTIT (State of Palestine)

The Permanent Secretariat will also include:

Communications Regulatory Agency CRA (Bosnia and Herzegovina)  EMERG Chair 2019


National Telecommunications Regulatory Authority NTRA (Egypt)  EMERG Chair 2018


Telecommunications Regulation Commission TRC (Jordan)– volunteer


Autorità per le Garanzie nelle Comunicazioni AGCOM (Italy) – volunteer

 

Since 2009 the Euro-Mediterranean Regulators’ Group (EMERG) has undertaken an annual benchmark of its member National Regulatory Authorities (NRAs). The results form the basis for the evaluation of the level of approximation of the southern Mediterranean countries (hereinafter also referred to as MENA countries) with respect to the European Framework for the electronic communications sector and the formulation of the Group’s Annual Work Plan.

There are minor changes in the organization of the 2017 Report compared to the 2016 Benchmark report. The 2017 Report seeks to quantify the rapprochement between MENA and European countries by showing the evolution of individual indicators over time. The use of digitization indices (Network Readiness Index, ITU Development Index) has remained unchanged. Like previous reports information about key performance indicators and trends of the telecom sector has also been collected and an update of the regulatory activities of the EMERG members in 2016 and 2017 is provided.

Chapter 1 of the Report is an introduction. Chapter 2 describes main trends in the telecommunication markets (fixed and mobile) in the EMERG countries based on data provided by EMERG members and other sources such as ITU, the World Bank etc. Chapters 3 to 8 focus on regulatory developments (institutional issues, market entrance conditions, consumer issues etc.) in EMERG countries. Finally, chapter 9 includes Regulatory Fiches from Member States that have participated in the survey.

THE REPORT: Final_EMERG_Benchmark_Report_2017

Study for

EURO-MEDITERRANEAN REGULATORS GROUP

(EMERG)

By:

Detecon International

WIK Consult GmbH