‘Roam like at home’ - the Regulation allowing Europeans travelling within the EU to pay domestic prices for roaming calls, SMS and data, is one of the S&D Group’s biggest achievements in the past years. Roaming charges officially ceased on 15 June 2017, but this decision had an expiration date - 30 June 2022. Today, the European Commission is reviewing the Regulation to prolong it beyond that date. The S&D Group fully backs this initiative.
Dan Nica MEP, S&D spokesperson on research and energy, said:
"We welcome the Commission’s proposal to prolong the Roaming Regulation for another 10 years. The new Regulation proposal further reduces the wholesale prices and reduces the regulatory burden. We need to prepare for the post-pandemic times when people will again start travelling and working from abroad, and access for European consumers to high-performance wireless broadband infrastructure at affordable prices across the EU is a must. We will make sure that citizens have access to better service. Paying the same prices as at home, or not having additional charges for travellers who call, send messages or surf the internet on their mobile devices while abroad, has been one of the biggest success stories of the European Union. The use of roaming data has grown twelve times on average compared to the levels before June 2017 and the number of phone calls made by travellers has roughly tripled compared to the period before June 2017. So let's continue this success story!"
Ismail Ertug MEP, S&D vice-president, said:
"‘Roam like at home’ is one of our biggest achievements as a Group, in the past mandate, and continuing its success is the way forward. It benefits all Europeans travelling, posted workers can stay in touch easier with loved ones back home, and is also a great help for Erasmus students studying away from family. It's a fight worth continuing and I join my colleagues in the S&D Group in congratulating the Commission for starting the work on this today.”
