On 22 January Mrs. Viviane Reding, the Commissioner for Information society and Media, delivered a speech to the Industry, Research and Energy Committee (ITRE) in the European Parliament.

After a short briefing on the 11 December Council conclusions concerning Information society, the Commissioner focused on the 2007 activities of her Directorate-General (DG).

In the evaluation of the December Council meeting, Mrs. Reding referred to the debate on spectrum policy, launched by the Commission. The Commissioner expressed satisfaction with the fact that all Member States shared their positions, stating: "the approaches were many and diverse but all ministers confirmed that a Pan-European approach, apart from the national, that will still prevail, is needed".

She related the liveliness of the debate to the expectation of an increased demand both from the side of the broadcasting and the other communication services.

The 2007 Agenda of DG Information society and Media envisages, in Reding's words, the revision of the "regulatory framework for Electronic communications" before summer as well as the edition of a second communication, reporting on the functioning of the current framework in June/July 2007. The Commissioner pointed out that "the results of the impact assessments of the June-October 2006 open consultations show an overall support in spectrum and consumer protection policy".

The Work Programme of the DG, as presented by Mrs. Reding, comprises further initiatives such as Commission Communications on Content Online (due to be adopted in the second half of 2007), on mobile TV (to be prepared in 2007), on ageing in the Information society (to be adopted ‘very soon’) as well as a Green Paper on universal service (to be prepared in 2007 with a vision for a legislative proposal in 2008)

In the debate following Mrs. Reding's speech, the questions concentrated predominantly on roaming.  There was one question concerning Spectrum Policy coming from Mrs Fiona Hall (British, Group of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe-ALDE), who was interested in the Commissioner's personal opinion of the reliability of the Council commitment to a Pan-European regulation of Spectrum Policy.

In Mrs. Reding's view, there was "an evolution of thinking and a rapid change of mentality among Member States in that respect". She added that, until a year ago, such an initiative would have been unthinkable. The Commissioner also made it clear that she had never put into doubt that spectrum should remain a national good. However, "the fact is that technology has developed and we are to have more cross boarder spectrum usage." Reding believes that access to spectrum was vital, because apart from "the radio broadcasters, who would certainly require a special treatment, there are more and more other services evolving."