BRIEF OVERVIEW OF THE METEOROLOGICAL MARKET IN CROATIA

The current Croatian Law on meteorological activities originated during the socialist period. According to this Law only the National Meteorological Service (NMS) in Croatia (originally the Socialistic Republic of Croatia) is allowed to perform meteorological tasks. The NMS is directly responsible to the government and well-connected politically, financially and media-wise. The primary creator of the monopolistic approach in Croatia is NMS General Manager Ivica Cacic who is also known as a TV-star.

In addition to its monopoly as regards performing meteorological tasks such as weather prediction, the NMS is the only holder of Environmental Data in the country and may sell or refuse to sell these data to any party.

For registering a company for meteorological tasks the Trade Court requires a written permission from the NMS. However, in practice it is impossible to get such a permission due to the above mentioned Law. This means that it is today impossible to register a private meteorological company in Croatia.

However, some seven years ago a private meteorological company in Zagreb called Meteo Centar did manage to receive the permit from the previous general manager of the NMS. More recently the NMS has tried to the cancel Meteo Centar's registration with the Trade Court without success, although the description of the company's activities had to be changed from "weather prediction" to "weather interpretation".

In 1999 the European Commission by means of a "Comfort Letter" (copy attached) authorised joint sale of meteorological products by ECOMET, a grouping of European National Meteorological Services set up for this purpose. The Croatian NMS has applied for membership in ECOMET The most important factors on which the Commission based its decision were as follows:

• The Ecomet rules ensure a "level playing field", i.e. equal treatment of independent service providers and the commercial divisions of the national meteorological institutes with regard to access to meteorological data and the invoicing of that data.
• In order to guarantee fair competition with independent service providers, the Ecomet rules require the national meteorological institutes to keep analytical accounts in which their commercial activities are entered separately and which thus ensure that there is no cross-subsidisation.
• There is an arbitration procedure for settling disputes between independent service providers and Ecomet members on any matter falling within the scope of the notified rules.

From the perspective of non-NMS actors and the social community, ECOMET looks very much like a cartel. However, the fundaments of the Comfort Letter are sound, and if strictly followed by the National Meteorological Services this solution does provide a fair market environment. On the other hand as the National Competition Authorities in many European countries are overloaded, some NMS's do from time to time deviate from or even abuse the applicable rules and regulations without complications and penalties.

In conclusion, should an NMS engage in meteorological services on a commercial basis, the rules and regulations of the EU, as included in the Treaty of Rome and in particular the Comfort Letter issued by the Commission in 1999 referred to above must be adhered to. In summary this means that:

1. all NMS customers for data and services must be treated fairly and equally;
2. all data in the total operational and historical data base managed
by the NMS must be available without any limitations or delays to all parties in the market place, and that
3. the NMS must not abuse its dominating position in the market place.

The most extreme example of the third category is when an NMS has been given, as seems to be the case in Croatia, powers to regulate the meteorological market even if operating itself commercially in that market place.

Milano, 18 October 2005

Antonio Verga
PRIMET Secretary General