Daseinsvorsorge, -service public-, Universaldienst

The liberalisation of telecommunications, energy and postal services has raised politically and legally controversial questions in the EC law debate. They refer to, inter alia, the conflict between the EC law liberalisation imperatives on the one hand, the national claim to sovereignty in the field of infrastructure policies on the other hand. Starting from a comparative study of the concepts of »Daseinsvorsorge« in Germany and "service public" in France and an analysis of the EC law, especially Art. 86 § 2 and Art. 16 ECT, the author presents the debate in a systematically coherent manner. A comparative analysis of the deregulation concepts and their realisation through secondary Community law in the different sectors then follows. Thoroughly discussing the practice of the EC courts and the EC Commission as well as the German, English and French literature, the analysis is placed within the framework of some of the fundamental questions of European law and economic order, with frequent references to the current discussion relating to the "constitutional" principles of European integration. Considering the slow progress of the creation of an internal market in the energy and postal sector, this study has important insights to offer with respect to the future development of these sectors.