The EU Roaming Regulation will be published in the Official Journal at the end of this week. With this, the legal aspects of roaming services across the EU will be applied starting with the 30th of June.

Almost a year ago, the European Commission started working on ways to reduce roaming charges which affect a large number of people that frequently travel abroad. Their plan was to bring prices smaller with up to 70 percent of initial costs by setting up maximum limits for the prices that mobile operators work with.

The Eurotariff sets a limit that can not be surpassed by carriers from the 27 Member States of the EU. All calls made from now on to other countries must be lower than 0.5 euros and those received have to charge at most 0.24 euros, without taxes. "We hope we've now seen the last of excessive roaming charges. I note with satisfaction that some operators are offering the new Eurotariff already as of 1 July," said EU Telecom Commissioner Viviane Reding.

For the mobile operators that do not have an existing roaming package, the Eurotariff will apply automatically starting with 30th of September 2007. The EU Rules also ask for transparency coming from service providers on the roaming prices they work with.

Viviane Reding also mentioned that "The Commission will, however, continue to monitor prices, in particular for SMS and data roaming, to make sure consumers do not suffer in other ways and to ensure after three years there is no longer a need to regulate. I hope that operators now understand the EU's ability to act. My message to them: Move now and bring SMS and data roaming charges down quickly, or we will be forced to also intervene there very shortly".

This is only the first stage in the process of making roaming services more affordable. The European Commission plans to reduce these taxes even more in 2008 and 2009.