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

Dans le cadre de l'Ifri Energy Breakfast Roundtable, un séminaire avec Christian Schülke, Junior Research Fellow au Programme Energie de l'Ifri, auteur d'une étude de l'Ifri sur les grandes entreprises électriques et gazières européennes (utilities) à paraître début 2010. Discutants : Matthias Dürr, Senior Manager European Union Affairs, RWE Brussels Office, Robert Klotz, partenaire et avocat, Hunton & Williams, ancien membre de la DG Concurrence à la Commission européenne et Jacques Lesourne, président du Comité scientifique du Programme Energie de l'Ifri.
Présidence: William C. Ramsay, Senior Fellow, Directeur du Programme Energie de l'Ifri.

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?