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About BASIC
The BASIC project aims to answer the question how to guarantee the provision of affordable and reliable basic services in and across the sectors for electricity, telecommunication, public transport and postal services in Europe.
The right of Europeans to have reasonable access to electricity, telecommunication, public transport and postal services is largely undisputed. While this statement may presently be unproblematic for the densely populated areas in the centre of Europe it becomes highly problematic for the peripheral and mountainous regions of the continent.
The liberalisation of the markets for telecommunications and electricity is well advanced, and the liberalisation of public transport and postal services is under discussion or has already been realised. The specific network properties of those industries make them a somewhat peculiar object for liberalisation and require an advanced set of intelligent rules and regulations to function properly in the long term.
BASIC addresses the issues related to the concept of reasonable provision of basic services as well as their implications for the liberalisation/regulation of network industries in Europe. BASIC addresses those issues in a policy neutral way, i.e. including an assessment of all the various different forms of regulation.
The specific objectives of BASIC are:
- To develop an operational concept of basic services to form the basis of a European discourse on this specific topic.
- To demonstrate the specific reasons and mechanisms that lead to certain outcomes of the liberalisation/regulation of network services in different countries.
- To provide the research and policy making communities with an integrated assessment of the crucial factors for a successful regulation of network services