The EU's Major Electricity and Gas Utilities: The Big Winners of Market Liberalisation?

As part of Ifri Energy Breakfast Roundtable series, a seminar with Christian Schülke, Junior Research Fellow, Ifri Energy Program, Author of an Ifri study on European utilities to be published in early 2010. Discussants: Matthias Dürr, Senior Manager European Union Affairs, RWE Brussels Office, Robert Klotz, Partner and Attorney, Hunton & Williams, former Official at DG Competition, European Commission and Jacques Lesourne, Chairman of the Scientific Committee of the Ifri Energy Program.
Chairman: William C. Ramsay, Senior Fellow, Director of the Ifri Energy Program.

Over the last 20 years, a small group of electricity and gas utilities have become large European-wide players. For instance, seven companies produce around 55 percent of the EU's electricity today. These companies hence have a great deal of influence for the sector's future. Since the beginnings of market liberalisation in the 1990s, the company landscape has significantly changed, as European utilities have reacted to the new environment and changed their business approach. Most visible, an intense merger and acquisition process started in the 1990s. It has led to the emergence of large groups like E.ON, GDF Suez, EDF, Enel, RWE, Iberdrola and Vattenfall that are present in many member states.

How have the strategies of these companies changed in the last 20 years? How does their Europeanization go together with the still not very advanced integration of European electricity and gas markets? Do we risk facing a European oligopoly once markets integrate, or do the several mergers and acquisitions help to establish competition in former monopoly markets?