The Assembly of the European Conference of Postal and Telecommunications Administrations (CEPT) met last 5-6 June in Malta, where it sought to establish a strategy to help confront the sector's current challenges. It was nevertheless shown to be quite divided about one of the pillars of that strategy - the organisation's future leadership.
In this meeting, the task force set up by the previous Assembly, held in Amsterdam, presented the outcome of its work, a set of 21 recommendations meant to reinforce the strong points and put forward proposals to plug CEPT vulnerabilities.
Recommendation 8 (on European co-ordination procedures with a view to preparing positions to defend in the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and Universal Postal Union (UPU)) and recommendation 11 (on accompaniment by the working group on ITU matters (WG ITU) of actions in the information society context) were the subjects of particular debate and obtained the consensus of the attending administrations, as did the remaining proposals.
But the same did not happen with recommendations 14 (Assembly mandate) and 15 (Assembly presidency), which generated a long and inconclusive discussion, particularly regarding the latter, which proposed three possible options for a future CEPT presidency:
- Maintain the status quo, i.e., the current presidency system, assessed by a troika, with the addition of an innovation - the creation of a 'management team' comprising the presidents of the Electronic Communications Committee (ECC), European Committee for Postal Regulation (CERP) and WG ITU;
- System of co-presidencies exercised by the ECC and CERP presidents;
- Alternating co-presidency exercised by the ECC and CERP presidents.
As option c) was immediately rejected, the discussion polarised around the defence of options a) and b), respectively led by the administrations of France, Spain, Switzerland and Portugal (although Portugal preferred option a), it admitted option b) with rules to be defined in detail) and on the other hand by the United Kingdom, Norway and Sweden. Given the administrations' division at this Assembly, the Maltese presidency opted to continue the discussion on these two questions - Recommendations 14 and 15 should thus again be the subject of internal consultation. The result of this new hearing of the administrations vis-à-vis the CEPT leadership, to be conducted this summer, will result in a new document that the presidency will subject to a new hearing in early October.
Although going against current rules, most of the States present supported a proposal by Germany - a Troika country - to continue for one more half-year the current Maltese presidency. A decision was thus made to maintain pending Serbia's already official candidacy for the new presidency; a new extraordinary Assembly should eventually be held in Malta, probably in late March 2009.