Serbia and Bulgaria sign Memorandum on reducing international roaming tariffs

Serbia and Bulgaria signed the Memorandum on reducing international roaming tariffs in electronic communications services on Saturday, December 9, 2017.

The agreement was signed by Serbian Minister of Trade, Tourism and Telecommunications Rasim Ljajic and Bulgarian Minister of Transport, Information Technologies and Communications Ivaylo Moskovski.

In his statement for Beta, Ljajic said that Bulgaria was the first EU member with which Serbia was signing a memorandum on lowering the prices of roaming services and reminded that similar agreements had been previously signed with Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and Macedonia, thanks to which the prices of outgoing calls in roaming have been lowered by 35% in the past three years.

He said that the memorandum with Bulgaria didn't automatically mean that the prices of roaming would be lowered, as “Bulgaria, as an EU member, doesn't have the authority or the mechanisms to make such a decision”, but he added that the signing of the memorandum “encourages telecommunications operators of the two countries to initiate the process of lowering the price of these services”.

– We believe that mobile operators of Serbia and Bulgaria will find a commercial interest in reducing the prices of roaming services through increased traffic frequency, which is in fact the essence of this memorandum, especially seeing how roaming was effectively abolished in the EU in June, as the prices of using the services of mobile operators abroad are equal to those in local traffic, amounting to 3.2 cents for a minute of an outgoing call – Ljajic said.

Unlike the EU, the prices of roaming in the region, despite the agreement of 2014, are still high, Ljajic clarified and added that outgoing calls were six times more expensive than in the EU and that the online transfer of data was 20 times more expensive.

– The end goal of the countries of the Western Balkans is to have the validity of the EU directive on abolishing roaming prices extended to our countries as well, as countries in the process of joining, although this will be neither easy nor quick – Ljajic concluded.

Let us remind that European Commissioner for Digital Economy and Society Mariya Gabriel will announce the plan for abolishing roaming between the EU and and the countries of the Western Balkans at the summit in Bulgaria to be held in May 2018. Gabriel will present a detailed set of measures on expanding the ban on charging for roaming in the EU to Serbia, Macedonia, Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina, which is currently being worked on by the legal consultants of the European Commission.

Ministarstvo turizma i omladine Republike Srbije

Ministarstvo građevinarstva, saobraćaja i infrastrukture Republike Srbije

Memorandum on reducing international roaming tariffs between Bulgaria and Serbia

electronic communications services

Ministry of Trade Tourism and Telecommunications of Serbia

Rasim Ljajic

Ministry of Transport Information Technologies and Communications of Bulgaria

Ivaylo Moskovski

roaming tariffs

roaming

Mariya Gabriel

European Commission

abolishing roaming with the EU