International

Much of the Netherlands has taken off this weekend for the holidays, the national Parliament has begun its recess, but in the European Parliament we have three weeks to go, next week being taken up with a full plenary session agenda in Strasbourg. Yet in the EP too the scent of holidays is in the air. This week, for instance, we’ll discuss the common European emergency number, 112. Useful if you’re on holiday, it means – at least in theory - that you can call emergency services on the same number throughout the twenty-seven member states. But problems remain.

In itself this is a good idea, but its application is not always the best. In the UK, for example, the main emergency number has always been, and remains, 999, and it’s to be hoped that tourists who call 112 will access the same services as the British resident who calls 999.

A second problem is simply that many people don’t know about the 112 number. The stock response from the Commission in such cases is that they will mount a promotional campaign. To be honest this doesn’t impress me. We know just how effective such campaigns are generally, despite the billions of Euros the Commission spends on them. A good approach would be to place information on the 112 number at all the places tourists use to organise their holidays, such as travel agencies or websites.

There remains also the problem of lack of network coverage for mobile phone use in places which are off the beaten track, where you might well have recourse to emergency services. Because the European Commission wants to hand over as much as is possible to the market, and such areas attract no commercial interest, development in remote corners of Europe has often ground to a halt. In the SP’s view this should be a task for the public authorities, because network coverage is an essential basic service which should be available everywhere. The state should therefore ensure that coverage is provided in unprofitable areas, possibly through subsidy or by providing it through a publicly-owned enterprise. The European Commission should in such a case not come out with its usual argument that this distorts competition.

This is one of the subjects which will be debated in Strasbourg. Much of it is uncontroversial, but this last point will provide an interesting test of whether neoliberal competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes can appreciate that there are things the market simply can’t do.