Commission of the European Communities
Directorate-General for Competition (DG IV),
Directorate IV/B - Restrictive Practices, Abuse of Dominant Position and other Distortions of Competition I,
Rue de la Loi 200/Wetstraat 200
B-1049 Brussels
B e l g i u m
Helsinki, 7 September 1999
Subject: Competition in Environmental Value Added Services - ECOMET (Case IV/B-3/34.563)
In 1995 the European Commission endorsed an Agreement for the Formation of an Economic Interest Grouping (`ECOMET') between a number of National Meteorological Services in Europe, with the following objectives
- to preserve the Free Exchange of Data Sets and Products between Members of the Grouping within the framework of WMO Regulations;
- to assist the Members of the Grouping to maintain and improve their infrastructure;
- to expand the availability of meteorological information within the ECOMET Territory;
- to increase the use and improve the distribution of data, products and services of the Members of the Grouping while maintaining and improving their quality;
- to create the conditions for Members of the Grouping to develop their economic activities.
In practice the arrangements have meant that the observational data and forecast model products resulting from the basic routine activities of the National Meteorological Services and exchanged freely between them under the ECOMET Agreement have been made available to the private sector, if at all, only at significant cost. Furthermore the prices for these data are determined and adjusted from time to time and without consultations by ECOMET, in a situation where no competition exists.
As the observational data and model products are essential for the environmental Value Added Services provided both by the governmental and the private sector, and as the National Meteorological Services in Europe can utilise this information for free whilst selling it in parallel to its competitors for such services, the competitive situation is eminently and unquestionably unfair and not appropriate within a European free market environment.
The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) poses special problems in this respect, having superior computational resources and producing global 10-14 day atmospheric predictions of the highest quality on a daily basis. In spite of the fact that ECMWF is an intergovernmental agency established by 19 Member States and not an agency set up by the European National Meteorological Services, its products are being made available for distribution within Europe exclusively by means of the ECOMET arrangement. Therefore these products are freely available to the National Meteorological Services and only at significant cost to the private sector.
However, according to Article 2 of the ECMWF Convention, and in particular Art. 2.1(e), it is the sovereign right and obligation of the ECMWF Member States to make the real-time predictions and archived historical data produced by ECMWF available to all 'meteorological offices' (state and private) within the country. Thus the ECOMET arrangement contradicts the ECMWF Convention which is an Agreement adopted by the National Parliaments of Europe on behalf of their respective countries. In spite of this, representatives of the National Meteorological Services, without authorisation from other parties affected and concerned, have by signing the ECOMET agreement and by related action in the ECMWF Council also approved restrictive rules for the distribution of ECMWF data.
As regards the future the situation looks even more threatening for the private sector: the ECMWF Council has recently decided that the Centre will start to produce very high resolution (typically 15-20 km) short range forecasts four times per day with output products being disseminated every three hours of forecast time. If these predictions are only distributed to the National Meteorological Services of the Member States, as seems to be the intention at present, the private sector meteorological services in Europe will in future not be able to compete seriously with the state sector due to the significant advantage as regards availability, reliability, quality and resolution provided by the high resolution ECMWF initial and boundary data and resulting from the vastly superior computational resources of the Centre.
As regards Weather Service Finland Ltd, a Finnish private sector SME and Value Added Service Provider engaged in commercial activities in several European countries, the impact of the ECOMET arrangement has significantly hampered the further development of business activities. The most recent incident is documented in ANNEX 1. A more complete file with similar case studies from Finland and other ECOMET countries is expected to be ready in the near future.
There would seem to be two basic approaches to remedy the situation with a view to reaching a solution which is appropriate within a European free market environment:
- units within the National Meteorological Services engaged in commercial activities are privatised or as a minimum administratively separated from the basic units producing observational and model data, and required to pay for any data they require according to the ECOMET rules applicable to the private sector;
- all observational and forecast model data (including ECMWF forecasts) produced within the governmental sector are made promptly and freely available to other governmental and private agencies.
The latter solution is applied by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and has been of great benefit to scientific research and for the provision of commercial services nationally within the United States as well as globally. In addition to being fair, such a solution for Europe would also be very beneficial to the European private sector engaged in environmental Value Added Services as well as to European scientific institutions and industrial entities dependent on environmental data and services.
In view the above, it is requested that the ECOMET Agreement be urgently reassessed by the European Commission in the light of the less than satisfactory experience of this arrangement throughout Europe during the last few years.
Yours sincerely,
Dr Pirkko Saarikivi
Managing Director
Weather Service Finland Ltd
Pursimiehenkatu 29-31 B
FIN-00150 Helsinki
Tel: +358-9-6689640
Fax: +358-9-66896411
e-mail: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
ANNEX 1. Finnish Meteorological Institute disturbing the quality of the Scandinavian radar composite and restricting delivery of data from automatic observing stations
In the following, the background information is given on the incident resulting in the request for action sent to the Finnish Competition Authority on August 16th, 1999. The request concerns two cases against the Finnish Meteorological Institute (FMI), which Weather Service Finland Ltd (WSF) consider as abuse of dominant position and restrictive practices:
- FMI deliberately adding erroneous information on radar data sent to the Scandinavian radar composite, product on the ECOMET Catalogue
- FMI restricting the international distribution of automatic weather station observations.
1. Problems with radar data
Since June 1998, WSF has bought the product of Scandinavian radar composite from the ECOMET Catalogue. The delivery is through the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute, the data provider of WSF. In June, 1999, erroneous echoes suddenly started to appear in the area of the Finnish radar coverage, which WSF first thought were from natural sources. To our great surprise, our data provider let us know that FMI is adding this information to the correct radar pictures deliberately, with a computer programme specifically written for this purpose, thus reducing the quality of the radar composite over the Finnish area. WSF tried first to solve the problem by negotiating with FMI, but without success. FMI offered as their solution to sell WSF the correct pictures at a higher price. For their own radar customers, FMI has been delivering correct data throughout this incident.
WSF's customers also recognised the poor quality of the radar pictures during the summer, when the problem of extra ground clutter added in the pictures was exceptionally bad (see example attached). In early August WSF got a request from one customer to pay some compensation. The current situation may also threaten some of WSF's contracts in the future, if the quality is not improved back to the normal level.
As this matter got so serious, WSF had no other alternative but approach Finnish Competition Authority, who recommended WSF to make a formal request for action. This was done on August 16th, 1999. The request also includes the information we have received from SMHI that ECOMET may in the future decide on higher prices by means of changing the pricing rule structure for radar pictures which may be another reason to accuse FMI on abuse of dominant position. So far WSF has not received any written confirmation on these new rules, though these have been requested from SMHI and ECOMET several times during 1998 and 1999.
2. Restrictions in the data delivery
The second point in the request concerns FMI's unwillingness to put all observational data on the ECOMET catalogue. There are especially some automatic marine stations which WSF knows do exist but WSF have no way to buy that data at the moment. SMHI has been requesting these data for several months without success. This restrictive practice is certainly against ECOMET rules and also against WMO rules. These data would be very valuable for WSF next winter when WSF is expanding its services and is responsible for the Finnish road weather service, in particular.
During the negotiations it became very evident that FMI finds it very hard to live with the fact that WSF buys its data from SMHI and they are now trying these means also for the reason to force WSF to be their customer. This kind of action is further abuse of ECOMET rules and the Competition Law.
One example of weather radar product on July 8th, 1999. No rainfall is detected by the Finnish radars in this situation. All light pixels in the figure, interpreted erroneously by customers as rainfall, result from ground clutter data added to the correct data intentionally by the Finnish Meteorological Institute.
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