Mission statement
BEREC aims at fostering the independent, consistent and high-quality regulation of digital markets for the benefit of Europe and its citizens.

In 2009, the Regulation (EC) 1211/2009 established BEREC, the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications. It is composed of all independent National Regulatory Authorities (NRAs) of the EU Member States. The European Commission, the independent NRAs of the EEA /EFTA countries and the EU accession countries also take part in BEREC’s work as participants without voting rights. The BEREC Office seated in Riga supports BEREC in fulfilling its tasks. In 2018, the BEREC regulation was renewed (Regulation (EU) 2018/1971).

BEREC marked its tenth anniversary in 2019. In the past ten years BEREC has been a forum for cooperation and exchange of views among the NRAs. It has provided its professional expertise, in particular to the European institutions, either upon request or on its own initiative.

BEREC’s responsibilities include identifying regulatory best practices and developing common positions as well as producing reports with the overall objective of a consistent application of the regulatory framework in electronic communications. Furthermore, BEREC became an acknowledged organisation as evidenced by the additional tasks that the European legislators entrusted to BEREC in the new European Electronic Communication Code (‘EECC’ or the ‘Code’) to foster the internal market. These new tasks include, among others, the delivery of technical guidelines on several subjects to facilitate the implementation of the Code, reporting on technical matters, keeping registers of providers, and developing databases for instance on numbering and general authorisations.

BEREC’s tasks go hand-in-hand with the four overarching objectives of the Code (Article3 (2)):

- Promoting connectivity and access to very high capacity networks;
-Promoting competition and efficient investment;
-Contributing to the development of the internal market;
-Promoting the interests of the citizens of the Union.

The three objectives relating to promoting competition and investment, promoting the internal market and empowering and protecting end-users were already guiding BEREC’s work in the past two medium-term strategies of 2015-2017 and 2018-2020. The connectivity target has always been pursued by BEREC through work streams around fixed and mobile connectivity and convergence. Therefore, the now four objectives remain the foundation of the assignments set out in BEREC’s multi-annual work programmes and continue to be its guiding force.

This latest update of BEREC’s strategy covers a period of five instead of three years, namely 2021-2025. This extended period enables better alignment with the legislative cycle of the Commission, and the objectives and new priorities set out by President von der Leyen for the period of 2019 -2024[1]. At the same time, the structure of the BEREC strategy is being kept so as to follow the strategic priorities around connectivity (very high capacity networks (VCHN), 5G), digital issues (including open internet) and end-users (including the digital divide).

To ensure that the BEREC strategy remains relevant and aligned with future developments, BEREC will revisit its strategic priorities over the course of the period.

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BEREC’s strategy for 2021-2025 needs to consider the impact of rapidly changing markets, new network technologies and expected policy developments in this period as well as the increasing cross-border nature of digital services.

BEREC’s work focus will be largely impacted by technical and market developments. Due to the fast-changing nature of the markets regulated by BEREC’s NRA members, it is imperative that BEREC keeps pace with and understands the impact that new technologies have on market dynamics and business models to be able to coordinate the implementation of appropriate regulatory measures by its NRA members, where required, and so that the objectives as laid down in the Code are achieved.

The path towards the gigabit society across the EU means that the infrastructure of the future will have specific requirements. These are extremely quick response times, high capacity, resilience and efficiency, as well as seamless integration of different networks and different technologies in order to allow consumers to switch from one to another without disruption and enjoy the same customer experience irrespective of their location and connection type.

From a supply side perspective, operators have historically deployed fixed and mobile networks independently of one another, with limited infrastructure sharing, requiring relevant stand-alone investments[2]. This modus operandi will evolve, because the technical development towards fixed mobile convergence and virtualisation now enables stronger structural convergence and cost-benefits from deploying and operating a shared infrastructure. Therefore, in some cases, the integration of mobile and fixed networks may even be necessary, e.g. to manage small cells inside buildings[3].