The chief executive of telecoms group Liberty Global has said the European Union (EU) has had its foot on the industry’s neck for 20 years, and accused Brussels of doing nothing to implement recommendations made by former Italian prime minister Mario Draghi to improve its competitiveness.
“The EU has done nothing really about the Draghi report ... around spectrum, merger controls, prioritising growth, these are things [where] they haven’t really done anything tangible,” Mike Fries told an industry conference on Wednesday.
“We [telecoms groups] are critical infrastructure, you’ve had your foot on our neck for 20 years. AI infrastructure is really cool ... but none of it works unless it all works,” he added.
Mr Fries has run Liberty Global – which owns half of Virgin Media O2 in the UK and Dutch telecoms group VodafoneZiggo, as well as the entirety of Belgian operator Telenet – since its formation in 2005. It also owns Virgin Media Ireland.
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His comments this week relate to Draghi’s 2024 report, which warned that the bloc will fall further behind the US and China if it doesn’t radically reform areas such as merger controls to allow the creation of ‘European champions’.
Liberty Global is one of several telecoms groups that have pushed EU officials to allow greater consolidation between operators in order to enable further investment in mobile networks.
In March, Telefónica chief Marc Murtra said Europe’s influence in the world would “continue to dwindle” without regulatory changes, while Deutsche Telekom CEO Tim Höttges called for a “European Doge” to cut bureaucracy.
While Brussels has historically been wary of mergers in the telecoms industry, citing the risk of higher prices and poorer service for consumers, it launched a review of the bloc’s merger rules in the wake of Draghi’s report, which is set to conclude in 2027.
European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen has asked her competition chief, Teresa Ribera, to speed up the work on the reforms, something supported by telecoms groups, however no changes have yet been made.
In his speech this week Mr Fries held up the delay of the publication of the Digital Networks Act (DNA), the EU’s proposed regulation to modernise telecoms networks, as evidence of the bloc’s malaise.
“I think we have to raise the temperature in Brussels,” Fries added. Liberty Global declined to comment.
EU officials have said that the scope of the DNA, which aims to facilitate quicker roll-out of 5G and 6G networks, is still under discussion. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2025
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