Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/2010/06/01/berec_new_home/

Sadsack EU regulator relegated to Latvia

BEREC office now 900 miles down the corridor

By Bill Ray

Posted in Networks, 1st June 2010 09:53 GMT

Castrated EU telecommunications regulator BEREC has now been relocated to Riga, Latvia - a mere 900 miles from everyone else.

The Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications was going to be a superpower: able to dictate policy across the EU and ride roughshod over national regulators. Since then its power has been steadily eroded to the point where it's a talking shop with a staff of ten, who now find themselves based in the capital of Latvia.

BEREC even had its memorable name, BERt (Body of European Regulators), stripped from it. The 120 staff have been cut to 20, half of whom are on secondment from national regulators - though we can't help thinking that a secondment to Latvia will be less popular than one to Brussels.

The purpose of BEREC is now to advise the EU Commission as well as national regulators on just about everything relating to telecommunications, when asked. It's hard to imagine the fiercely independent national regulators rushing to Riga for advice, but it will provide a place for the regulators to meet up - much as the European Regulators Group used to before it was disbanded. ®