Slovenia’s AKOS hits out at plans to merge regulators

Slovenia’s Agency for Communications Networks & Services (Agencija za komunikacijska omrezja in storitve, AKOS) has responded to government plans to create a new regulator with a much wider remit. The new watchdog – to be called the Public Agency for Market and Consumers – will incorporate the operations of AKOS and the Agency for Financial Markets. As well as complaining that it was given just one day to respond to the government proposals, AKOS says that an enlarged regulator will ‘slow down the performance of statutory tasks and responsiveness to market conditions’. It says that its existing remit is already one of the widest among European regulators, covering electronic communications, radiocommunications, post, electronic media and railways, even though it is the fourth smallest regulatory body in Europe in terms of employees.