Parliament’s rejection of the draft amendment to the telecommunication law at the end of last year has significantly hampered the ambitions of the sector to complete total liberalization of the telecommunications market, reads a report submitted to the cabinet by Transport Minister Pavol Prokopovic. The report evaluates Slovakia’s telecommunication policy between 2000 and 2002, and was approved by the cabinet on Wednesday.

As part of Slovakia’s pre-accession ambitions, work began on the implementation of new EU directives for electronic communications. The EU directive will be reflected in a new law on electronic communications. Such change will be much more substantial and will be devoted to a great part of the future development strategy for the telecommunications sector, according to the ministry’s evaluation.

The ministry says it will be necessary to transfer shareholders‘ rights in Slovak Telecom from the Transport Ministry to a different department of the state administration, perhaps the Finance Ministry, in order to achieve complete independence of the creator of the national telecommunications policy from entities regulated on the Slovak telecommunications market, the document reads.

The evaluation appreciated the establishment of an independent regulatory body for telecommunications – the Telecommunications Office (TU) in July 2000. Regarding this, TU budgetary chapter should be separated from the Transport Ministry by the EU accession date at the latest. Based on Slovak telecommunications market development and in line with the telecommunications law, it was necessary to specify carriers with a significant influence on the market. This was the responsibility of the Telecommunications Office, which however, failed to do so.

The evaluation also assessed the Slovak Telecom privatization. Its unfavorable features include lower employment, with the number of employees dropping from 14,967 in 1998 to 10,100 in 2002.