Winners and losers
The Single Market has been at the core of Europe since the founding of the European Economic Community with the Treaty of Rome in 1957. From the original Common Market of six members to the present Union of 15 Member States, the same free-trade objective has been consistently pursued. The fundamental aim as set out in the Treaty has been described as the realisation of four freedoms - to allow unhindered movement throughout the Community for people, for goods, for services and for capital. The goal, which has by now been very largely achieved, is a Community where companies can trade, people's skills can be employed and investors' resources can be utilised without regard to national boundaries.
This Community has a home market-place of 370 million people, large enough to provide a sound commercial and industrial base from which to challenge and compete with the other major world trading blocks. The importance of this for Europe's continuing prosperity is evident, as is the very deliberate and determined structuring of the Single Market as a fully competitive and highly deregulated economy, in dramatic contrast to the interventionist policies adopted in earlier economic programmes, such as that for agriculture. This market-driven economy brings with it the benefits of consumer empowerment, with consequent wide freedom of choice and keen pricing, as suppliers of goods and services from all over Europe compete for customers. Innovation is encouraged and the enthusiastic introduction of new technologies can proceed unhindered by protectionist regulatory restraints. The rapid growth of information technology and the advent of the "Information Society" create the opportunity for massive exploitation of technological innovation in the Telecommunications sector. For the consumer, deregulation of Telecommunications should bring untold opportunities and expose new horizons as these new developments are brought to the market place.
Unhappily, that view will hold true only for those consumers whose requirements are comparable with those of a majority of their fellows. Manufacturers and service companies are promoting new mission statements to their employees and agents with the message that the customer is King, and that satisfying the consumer is the only way to pay the wages. In an environment of free trade and full competition, the supplier who does not satisfy the customer does not stay in business. This market philosophy of addressing the needs of the paying client tends to fail when clients require something out of the ordinary, unless they happen to be rich enough to pay a special price for a customized product or service.
People with disabilities often have need of a product which is in some way special, in order to be able to access facilities which other people take for granted. At the same time, people with disabilities tend to have less disposable income, and more pressing claims on their financial resources, than others. In a highly regulated and non-competitive business sector, such as that of the former state Telecommunications monopolies, any special needs of disadvantaged consumers could be taken care of, whether by accident or design, because the economic costs of so doing were either unknown or discounted.
For consumers, the winners in a competitive environment are those whose custom is eagerly sought. They will find the best choice of goods and services, and benefit from the best bargains on prices. The losers will be those whose requirements are unusual or are costly to meet. Without a safety net of some kind, their already difficult position will be made worse. The services which they have come to rely upon may be at risk, through being commercially unviable, and their customer profiles may be too far removed from that of the target audience for them to be considered when new developments are planned. They form the population of the niche markets and as such are reliant upon suppliers who are prepared to operate in that uncertain territory.
Identifying these losers, in order to establish a safety net, requires some care. It would, for example, be quite wrong to imply that a group which might be described as "people with disabilities" is synonymous with Telecommunications users with special needs. Some disabled people, particularly those with mobility problems, will welcome the deregulated era of Telecommunications as tantamount to liberation. Access difficulties with telephone kiosks vanish when you can use a mobile from a wheelchair, and a home workstation connected to the information highways means that there is no need to battle with physical barriers in order to communicate with the world, or even to order the groceries. Even those with the most severe of speech and mobility difficulties, who could not hope to use a standard telephone or even a text terminal in real time, cease to be disabled when they join the company of data senders, such as Email: subscribers or Internet users. Those who are at real risk of disadvantage are the people with sensory impairments, who would expect to be able to communicate in real time with all other users of the voice Telephony networks, but who need some special equipment or network facilities in order to do so. Their position is not obviously different from that of the subscriber who is geographically remote from the nearest lines, but would use the network if a connection could be made. In the one case it is the provision of several miles of line or a radio link which is required, in the other it is a modified telephone terminal or a network that can recognise text protocols.
The free trade philosophy is the bedrock of the European Single Market and it has been, and no doubt will continue to be, vigorously defended both by the Commission and by those commercial operators who are keen to expand their markets within Europe. From time to time, Member States may attempt to protect some national interest by maintaining or introducing provisions which act as barriers to trade; the Commission will then intervene to remind them of their treaty obligations as members of the European Union. At the same time, the Commission acts to support the policies of the European Union of avoiding discrimination and maintaining equality among the citizens of Europe. There is a clash of doctrines here, with the free trade view - which is that the market will provide - set against the interventionist view - which is that it will not. For the consumers who become the losers in the free market, there is no doubt that some intervention is necessary. If the purpose of the Single Market is Europe's greater prosperity, then some protection or recompense is owed to the losers. That much is common ground and the only question - and the justification for setting out here what is already beyond contention - is that of how to achieve it.
| Previous | Contents | Next |