Energy Market Report

The Commission has published a report on the implementation of the gas and electricity markets.

You can download the report - COM (2008) 192 final - here.

Of course, creating an efficient European-wide market for gas and electricity in such traditionally balkanized industries is clearly important if Europe wants to remain something of an industrial power in the coming decades.

But the conclusions of the report are not wholly encouraging:

"Despite some encouraging improvements, notably on cross-border coordination at regional level, the overall analysis of progress on the internal market in electricity and natural gas shows that major barriers to the efficient functioning of the market still exist.
Insufficient implementation of European legislation remains a crucial factor."

The fact that the language of the report sometimes descends into impenetrable Commission-babble does not help.