Customers on industrial sites shall be able freely to choose their gas supplier, having resort to the national regulatory authorities in the event of a disagreement with the network operator.

Customers on industrial sites shall be able freely to choose their gas supplier, having resort to the national regulatory authorities in the event of a disagreement with the network operator.

Commission disagrees with Austrian regulator on transit services in the fixed public telephone network

Previously, the sales targets were decided by the manufacturers. Provision is made for arbitration in the event of disagreement; . the extension of the minimum duration of agreements between manufacturers and dealers from four to five years and the extension of the period of notice for termination from one to two years, so as to ensure better protection of dealers' investments; . a ban on the inclusion of anti-competitive clauses (blacklisted clauses) in the contract on pain of forfeiting exemption (contract covering products or services not provided for in the block exemption Regulation, purchasing restrictions, remuneration calculate ...[+++]d by reference to the place of destination, etc.); . the dealer may engage in any type of selling (including leasing) of new vehicles but neither the dealer, nor the manufacturer can supply dealers outside the network.

Preparatory action is underway involving feasibility studies and pilot projects costing 22 million ecus in the domains of EURO-ISDN (Integrated Service Digital Network, involving health care, teleworking, education, applications for small and medium-sized enterprises and desktop/multimedia services. Following a mandate from the Essen European Council in December last year, the Commission has established a high level group to define the criteria for the setting up of environmental networks. The idea is for member states to join in developing projects of common interest for environmental protection or improvement such as waste management or water policy. In terms of the transport networks, assessing the progress of the 14 priority projects is ...[+++] complicated by the fact that these are long-term infrastructure projects, necessarily cross-border: it may be that there is substantial progress in one section of a project and no action elsewhere. Establishing the proper legal framework for the TENs has been greatly hampered by disagreement between Member States and the European Parliament as to whether to include the priority projects as agreed at Essen and an article on the need for environmental assessments - to which the Commission is committed. Of greater long term concern to the Commission is the perceived reluctance of national governments to adapt their national priorities to building the TENs network. While welcoming the potential benefits - competitiveness, job creation and economic cohesion - many countries behave as if construction and funding are the job of someone else. This is reflected in terms of slow progress in defining projects (eg. the Munich-Verona ie.Brenner), conflicting scheduling on the part of national authorities either side of a border (eg. PBKAL, HST-East), failure to resolve financing questions (eg PBKAL, Brenner, HST-East) and inability to from multinational project authorities to co- ordinate work on projects (eg. PBKAL, Brenner).