hypocricy (Score 1)

The EU politians and bureaucrats care about this mainly because they see it, they're hopping countries several days a work week from say Germany to Belgium to France to Luxemburg on EU business and even if they expense their own bills their friends and visitors may not be able to do it. The hypocritical aspect is there's plenty of comparable rip offs in the EU that the same people have had a hand in creating themselves, high sales tax on almost everything (~20%). But they need those taxes to pay their own salaries. However with a bit of clever operator picking roaming charges aren't that bad. "Three" for instance give same cost roaming in countries where they operate (Italy, Austria, UK, Ireland and some others) Vodafone provide a reasonable way of roaming in practically every EU country through their vodafone live service at about 3 euro a day for 50M. Sure you end up swapping sim cards - but that's not a big deal. What the EU will do is likely to force down roaming costs for the few but slighly increase more typical user costs as company strive to maintain profits. Chances are they'll also increase prices for those people who know their way around the various network schemes.