Digital Networks Act lands in Brussels

After months of whispers and managed expectations, the European Commission has unveiled the Digital Networks Act, its long-awaited flagship effort to rewire Europe’s telecom landscape. 

Cast as the foundation of Europe’s digital future, the plan aims to modernise telecom rules, accelerate fibre deployment and tidy up a single market that remains stubbornly fragmented.

The ambition is real. The surprises are not.

A familiar text, now official

For anyone who has followed the leaked drafts circulating in Brussels in recent weeks, the final proposal holds few surprises. The changes are largely cosmetic – articles reshuffled, language tightened – while the core architecture remains largely intact.

Substantively, the Digital Networks Act is an exercise in scale and speed. It lays out a carefully sequenced path to the end of copper and the full embrace of fibre, anchored in national transition plans, environmental safeguards and, eventually, a mandatory switch-off to be triggered by December 2035. Opt-outs remain on the table, where economics or engineering refuse to cooperate.

Much of the burden, and discretion, falls to national authorities, which are empowered to vet migration plans, police compliance and impose sanctions. While smoothening implementation, this choice already hints at future political tension.

On access regulation, the proposal opts for renovation rather than reinvention. Symmetric access obligations are reinforced, alongside an expanded toolkit for co-location and infrastructure sharing. Regulators are given firmer ground to safeguard interoperability, competition and investment, even beyond the familiar confines of Significant Market Power.

For the ex-ante approach, the old architecture largely holds. The traditional hierarchy of remedies survives, albeit nudged toward more harmonised access products at EU level and a greater reliance on voluntary commitments, especially in co-investment. Wholesale-only operators, by contrast, are promised a lighter regulatory hand, provided they remain firmly out of retail markets.

Governance is where the institutional reshuffle comes into focus. BEREC gains new responsibilities, while a freshly minted Office for Digital Networks is set to take over its administrative backbone. As expected, the politically charged idea of a “fair share” levy on Big Tech is absent. In its place sits a dispute-resolution mechanism that has managed to disappoint both telecom operators and Big Tech alike.

Broad buy-in on objectives, fault lines on execution

While the text itself raised few eyebrows, it was closely examined in Strasbourg, where lawmakers dug into the details. Framing the Digital Networks Act as a strategic response to geopolitical tension and rapid technological change, Commissioner Henna Virkkunen stressed that connectivity is no longer a technical file but a foundation for competitiveness and sovereignty.

Across party lines, MEPs broadly endorsed that diagnosis. From the EPP through S&D, Renew and ECR, MEPs converged on a shared anxiety: Europe’s digital ambitions are sprinting ahead of the networks meant to support them. Fibre, 5G and 6G dominated the chamber, while fragmentation, sluggish deployment and chronic underinvestment were assigned the role of common adversaries.

Digital networks were repeatedly described as critical European infrastructure, essential for not only growth, but also for security and strategic autonomy.

Where unity frayed was on how far Brussels should go. Conservatives warned against regulatory overreach and a creeping centralisation that could erode national prerogatives, particularly on spectrum policy. 

Liberals and Social Democrats argued that only deeper harmonisation and EU-level scale could deliver a genuine single market. Greens emphasised the need to reduce dependencies on non-EU tech providers and close remaining fibre gaps. 

Net neutrality resurfaced as a political red line for several groups.

Hovering at the edges was the unresolved question of “fair share.” Some MEPs welcomed its marginalisation, while others argued the proposal sidesteps the harder question of how investment burdens should be shared between telecom operators and global tech platforms.

Battle lines harden in Council and Parliament

In the Council, centralisation is already shaping up as the defining fault line. In recent months, competing coalitions of Member States have circulated non-papers pointing in opposite directions.

Austria, Germany, France, Italy, Hungary and Slovenia have pushed back against Brussels-centric instincts, calling for stronger national autonomy. Several went further, suggesting the Digital Networks Act should have taken the softer form of a Directive rather than a directly applicable Regulation.

A second camp, led by Ireland and Spain, has made the opposite case, pressing for firmer EU-level governance and a more centralised hand to deliver scale and coherence.

This clash is set to dominate Council negotiations, with the first camp carrying significant weight thanks to the combined heft of France, Germany and Italy.

The Rapporteurship question

In the European Parliament, the file will land in the ITRE Committee, where manoeuvring is already under way. Surprisingly, the EPP failed to secure the rapporteurship, leaving veteran lawmaker Pilar del Castillo Vera to a shadow role. The file instead went to Renew, with Polish MEP Michał Kobosko set to take the lead as rapporteur.

Attention is already turning to the S&D, where Elena Sancho Murillo and Matthias Ecke are positioning themselves as influential shadows, with Ecke widely regarded as the frontrunner. Within ECR, the calculus is more tactical: Torselli and Solier are being weighed against one another, with one likely to take on the Digital Networks Act while the other positions for the forthcoming Cybersecurity Act.

Beyond the parliamentary choreography, there is broad agreement in Brussels that Europe needs better networks. The more uncomfortable question is whether the law designed to deliver them can move faster than the market it seeks to regulate.