International Antitrust Law & Policy: Fordham Corporate Law 2001 - Hardcover
International Antitrust Law & Policy: Fordham Corporate Law 2001 - PDF
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Chapter 15
ENERGY LIBERALISATION AND EC
COMPETITION LAW
Michael Albers†
I. THE ROLE OF EC ANTITRUST LAW
There have been 15 national and largely isolated electricity and gas
markets in the European Union (EU) until recently. Other than for coal,
petrol and nuclear energy these markets had not been made part of the
European common market. This situation changed with the adoption of
liberalisation directives for electricity1 and gas2 (the ‘‘Directives’’) and their
implementation in the year 1999 for electricity and 2000 for gas by almost all
15 Member States.3 The Directives provide for the creation of Communitywide
markets for electricity and gas as they exist already for other fuels and,
indeed, almost all other goods and services. Monopoly rights at the national
level had to be abolished, a legal framework to allow new market entry as
well as access to the networks had to be created and consumers had to be
empowered to choose freely their suppliers throughout the EU. Energy
liberalisation thus means to build single European electricity and gas markets
out of 15 isolated national markets through the introduction of competition
between energy suppliers for customers.
Expectations are that competitive European energy markets will increase
the efficient allocation of resources and enhance consumer welfare. Distortions
of competition between substituting fuels should come to an end.
Competition between suppliers should lead to a downward convergence of
prices in Europe. These expectations seem to be well founded in view of the
positive developments for European consumers in the relatively short period
of time since the Directives have been implemented. In particular are positive
price developments, which are up to now more pronounced for electricity
Head of Unit, EC Commission, Brussels. I would like to thank my colleagues of
the Energy Unit for their many enlightening comments to the first draft of this paper.
All errors are mine, of course. All views expressed are personal.
