(FRANKFURT) - A European Commission proposal to overhaul telecommunications controls drew rebuttals Wednesday from German specialists who believe the measures would lead to excessive regulation.

A proposal to create a European regulatory body "goes against the principles of subsidiarity and deregulation," junior economy minister Bernd Pfaffenbach said.

The principle of subsidiarity holds that matters should be dealt with at the closest possible level to the one they affect, to focus decision-making at low levels of power.

A new European Union body would also be "an irreversable process, we would not be able to abolish it," whereas EU regulatory bodies were supposed to disappear eventually, he added.

The government is backed by Deutsche Telekom, the former state monopoly, and by its rivals grouped within the VATM federation of new telecoms operators, which said in a statement it was "totally incomprehensible" to want to exercise more control over the sector.

EU Communications Commissioner Viviane Reding wants to launch a radical overhaul of the rules governing the industry.

The Commission hopes the reform, which includes plans for a European telecoms watchdog, would encourage a pan-European communications market and do away with a patchwork of rules that now complicates cross-border business.

The most radical proposal could see dominant telecommunications giants such as France Telecom or Deutsche Telekom split up, in much the same way as the Commission has already proposed to do in the energy sector.

Pfaffenbach said that Britain, France and Spain shared the German position and that to date, no country had openly voiced support for the EU commission project.

Berlin and Brussels are already in conflict over a German law that took effect early this year and gives Deutsche Telekom an advantage in the market for high-speed Internet access.

Reding filed a complaint with the European judicial system in June over the matter, which has yet to be resolved.

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