Everyone has a mobile phone. Some people barely use land lines anymore. More than half of phones are now internet-ready smart phones.

They have led to a shift in the way we interact with each other, and interrupted dinners on a level not seen since the introduction of broadband internet. In fact, a lot of you are possibly reading this article off your phone.

Love them or hate them, they have become part and parcel of our daily lives.

Mobile phone rates on a national level, while still on the high side, have become largely affordable, but with the end of summer many of us have returned from a few days away to find that the call we made while abroad or those photos we posted online from our phones have come at a huge cost.

Over the past years the EU has legislated to consistently lower roam-ing rates across member states.

In some cases the cost has decreased by as much as 91 per cent. On July 1, rates decreased again and they will go down further by July 2014.

This is still not enough.

I have always argued for the removal of barriers acting against the freedom of movement. We want people to feel truly European. We want businesses to be able to conduct easy transactions across borders.

We want people to travel and students and academics to spend a semester at a different European university, but we have to put into place the right regulatory framework that will allow this to happen.

Removing mobile phone charges within the EU is another natural (albeit small) step in this process. It makes it easier to travel. It makes it easier to do business. It is one barrier we can remove and one we should.

To my mind it makes little sense that we are treated so differently across different EU member states.

While some mobile phone companies have begun a process of reducing rates, by and large, they have been too slow to self-regulate in this regard. Consumers, Europeans and businesses expect more and deserve better.

Our generation travels abroad more than any other generation before it.

To my mind it makes little sense that we are treated so differently across member states

Cross-border trade for our businesses is the norm and we rely on our phones more than ever.

So when the International Herald Tribune reports that 56 per cent of consumers limited the use of mobile internet or turned off the roaming function on their devices entirely while travelling within the EU, it is startling.

It is not only about protecting consumers’ interests. I understand that mobile phone companies invest hugely in new technology and must be allowed to operate, but in the case of ending roaming charges, the economic argument makes sense too.

Lowering roaming fees across the EU has led to an explosion of people using their mobile abroad, with the result that many mobile phone companies expanded and continued to invest in technology that allows us to use our phones as often as we like at home – just not as often as we would like when we are in another EU member state.

Or at least not yet.

It is clear that the lower the fees, the higher the usage and the greater the client base grows.

Earlier this year, the European Commissioner responsible for the Digital Agenda, Neelie Kroes, said she would like to see roaming charges eliminated completely.

In the coming weeks, the European Commission should announce new rules to address this issue.

It is expected that this legislation will contain provisions and incentives that will seek to ensure that roaming rates are reduced to the same amounts as national charges.

Member states and the European Parliament will then have to agree to this legislation before it can become a reality.

I will do my utmost, as a member of the European Parliament committee that deals with internal market and consumer affairs, to ensure that the final piece of legislation, which could already be in place by Easter 2014, is balanced and addresses the core issue of roaming charges.

When, as a candidate in 2009, I led the campaign to ban ’time-windows’ on pre-paid mobile phone top-up cards, people were sceptical to say the least.

It took a couple of months before national operators stopped the practice of forcing consumers’ mobile phone credit to expire after a very limited amount of time.

Indeed, technology has moved forward so quickly that the concept of short term time-windows seems like a generation ago.

This is the nature of the sector and it will hopefully only be a matter of time before roaming charges are also a thing of the past.

Roberta Metsola is a Nationalist member of the European Parliament