While the draft DNA contains some welcome steps, especially on spectrum and fiber migration, its overall approach in many other areas remains too incremental to close that gap. If the DNA is to succeed, it must do three things:
—First, the DNA must enable innovation, not freeze networks in a regulatory model designed for the past. Open internet rules should continue to protect customers, but they must also reflect how modern networks are used today, including for advanced enterprise and industrial services. The same services should be regulated in the same way, regardless of how they are delivered.
—Second, for innovation to be scaled in Europe, the DNA must deliver a real single market. Beyond passporting, applying the country-of-origin principle to cross-border telecoms operations, especially for business services, would materially reduce the burden of complying with 27 overlapping national regimes.
—Third, Europe must lower the cost of doing business. That means prioritizing spectrum policy reform, accelerating copper switch-off where fiber is available and removing overlapping legacy rules that no longer reflect today’s digital ecosystem.
Europe does not need more political statements around strategic autonomy. It needs policy that unlocks European innovation and allows businesses to redirect scarce capital to drive the new capabilities that Europe needs within this mandate.
Security policy that strengthens networks