A European success: end of roaming charges benefits 500 million people

As of today, roaming charges in the EU will disappear. Spanish MEP Pilar Del Castillo, who negotiated the historic agreement on behalf the European Parliament, said “the elimination of roaming charges for voice calls, text messages and data is an initiative by the Parliament that benefits more than 500 million consumers as well as Europe’s SMEs and start-ups in all sectors of the economy. The strong commitment and political leadership of the European Parliament has been crucial for abolishing roaming charges.”

Del Castillo added: “Beyond the tangible savings for consumers, the abolishment of roaming charges represents the end of another barrier to the free circulation of people and services inside the European Union. It is a very good example of the European Union’s added value. Our capacity to achieve concrete results such as this strengthens the European project.”

She also said: “The end of roaming is an important step in the development of the Digital Single Market, one of the European Institutions' priorities for this legislature.”

“We now need to concentrate our efforts on making Europe a Gigabit Society by promoting the deployment of very high capacity networks that will allow Europe’s economy and society to fully take advantage of all the opportunities that the extraordinary digital transformation offers,” Del Castillo concluded.