Friday 27 March, 2026
Telecoms infrastructure forms the backbone of and is an enabler of Europe’s productivity growth and competitiveness in the growing digital economy. The present debate around the ability of the telecoms sector to invest is therefore a crucial and meaningful one, with the revision of the Horizontal Merger Guidelines a once-in-a-generation opportunity to rewrite the rulebook and boost European competitiveness, investment, and innovation.
The GSMA and Connect Europe take note of the recent CEPR blogpost on the EU telecom sector’s ability to remunerate its cost of capital published by a group of economists from the Chief Economist Team at the European Commission. As stated by the authors, the views cannot be regarded as an official position of DG Competition or of the European Commission and all errors and views are only attributable to the authors. We regret that the full details and underlying data behind the analysis have not been published.
Nevertheless, we welcome the continued constructive engagement with the European Commission and DG Competition on merger policy reform and are encouraged by the reception of the study commissioned by the GSMA and Connect Europe, published this month.
