REPORT ON HEALTH AND HYGIENE REQUIREMENTS INTRODUCED BY REGIONE LOMBARDIA FOR PERMANENT PHONE-CENTERS
PRESS RELEASE
PRESS RELEASE
PHONE-CENTERS: ANTITRUST AUTHORITY SAYS REGIONE LOMBARDIA'S REGULATIONS DISTORT COMPETITION
Onerous requirements imposed and new openings blocked. Higher costs and less competition will lead to increased prices for users.
Regione Lombardia is regulating the opening of phone-centers in an unjustifiably anti-competitive manner. This is the opinion expressed by the Antitrust Authority in a report approved on 3 August 2007 in which it urges the Regional Government to eliminate the anti-competitive aspects from the regulation so as to avoid, amongst other things, price increases for consumers.
In the view of the Italian Competition Authority, Regional Law no. 6 of 3 March 2006 imposes burdensome and unjustified health, hygiene and safety requirements on phone-center businesses, on pain of closure of their premises. Furthermore, it gives the municipalities control over the location of phone-centers by way of the Territorial Management Plan (PGT) and, pending the adoption of the PGTs, bans the opening of new permanent phone-centers or the relocation of those already existing.
In the Antitrust Authority's view, the health and hygiene requirements established are burdensome and unjustified in that they are unrelated to the quality of the service offered and will lead to significant increases in the cost of opening and maintaining a phone-center.
The regulation will have the effect of limiting competition among the operators, reducing their numbers and increasing costs: the consequences will be felt by consumers who will have to pay higher prices for international calls that at present are particularly good value at phone-centers.
In its report, the Authority points out that the fixing of qualitative constraints must be dictated by objective requirements and must respect the principles of need and proportionality. Regione Lombardia's rules on the location of phone-centres in fixed premises also introduce an element of rigidity into the system that will lead to quantitative planning of supply, in contrast with both the protection of competition and the provisions of decree no. 223 of 4 July 2006 (known as the first Bersani-Visco decree) that exonerates commercial activities from respecting minimum obligatory distances between businesses of similar type.
Rome, 16 August 2007