Les régulateurs nationaux lancent des marchés régionaux de l'électricité

ERGEG Chairman Sir John Mogg said: "We are currently seeing major strategic policy from the Commission and the Council designed to deliver a competitive liberalized single European market across an integrated European grid. Our Electricity Regional Initiative is entirely consistent with this and will help by making progress at a practical level in the seven European electricity regional markets that are targeted".  

The creation of smaller-scale regional energy markets within the EU is received with some degree of scepticism at the European Commission. "What Europe needs is a more integrated approach [to energy policy]" said Commission spokesperson Johannes Laitenberger on 27 February.  "It is not with 25 mini energy markets that Europe will successfully be able to meet the globalisation challenge".

Laitenberger said a Green Paper due to be launched on 8 March will go into more detail about the Commission's intentions on further energy liberalisation. An early draft of the paper, seen by EurActiv, proposes to aim for a single European electricity grid by harmonising grid rules and defining route-by-route electricity interconnection plans.

In the long run, the Commission sees the powers of national energy regulators streamlined and EREG replaced by a new community body over which it would have better control, the European Energy Regulatory Agency.

France, Germany and the Benelux countries were the first to decide on a regional energy imitative last year with the launch of a forum on interconnection and security of supply.