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No Innocents Here: Using Litigation To Fight Against The Costs Of Universal Service In France, Dorit Reiss
No Innocents Here: Using Litigation To Fight Against The Costs Of Universal Service In France, Dorit Reiss
Dorit R. Reiss
Liberalization of utility sectors may bring the benefits of competition to customers, but it also creates risks of manipulation of the new system by powerful industrial actors. Litigation is one tool available to undermine or delay effective regulation. In 2001 the European Court of Justice declared the French system of funding universal service in telecommunications untreaty, and ordered France to redesign it. The commission and observers understood the case as a triumph of open market over France’s narrow protection of the "national champion" French Télécom. An alternative interpretation that fits the data better describes the story as successful use of …