The European Union will cut its telecommunications allocation by 1,000 million euros

With this budget cut, the European Union has just lost an important opportunity to achieve a competitive Europe not only for the coming years, but also, and more importantly, for the future.

After two long days of long debates and negotiations that lasted into the early hours of the morning, the leaders of the European Union approved the community budget for the period 2014-2020 last Friday.

After the European Council, the accounts of the Union must receive the approval of Parliament, setting the ceiling of community public spending for those seven years at 960,000 euros.

Before approval, four proposals were discussed with significant cuts until reaching a definitive reduction of 33 billion euros in the spending ceiling, compared to the budget for the period 2007-2013.

Although the item dedicated to investment in competitiveness, growth and employment is the most affected, with almost 14 billion less, transport, energy and telecommunications have also suffered the significant cut since some 29,000 million euros will be allocated to this area instead of 41,000 billion as planned.

Specifically, to the development of telecommunications, Europe will allocate 1 billion less in the next budget year.

The Fiber to the Home Council (FTTH) has drawn attention to this cut, stating that this measure will mean that "there will be no room to support investments in fiber infrastructure. The decision demonstrates that there is still a lack of understanding among European governments about the importance of broadband networks for the future."

With this budget cut, the European Union has just lost an important opportunity to achieve a competitive Europe not only for the coming years, but also, and more importantly, for the future.