ERGEG Status Review of End-user Price Regulation as of 1 July 2008

This Status Review is a follow-up to ERGEG’s July 2007 Position Paper on End-user Energy Price Regulation which called for the removal of regulated prices and for Member States to publish (by July 2008) a roadmap on how they were going to do this. This Status Review shows that one year after full market opening (i.e. by July 2008), regulated prices continue (alongside market prices) in a large number of EU countries (15 in electricity, and 13 in gas). More than 80% of customers across all market segments remain on regulated prices, confirming a serious lask of competition in retail energy markets. In 12 of those 15 countries with regulated end-user electricity prices, and in 10 of the 13 countries with regulated end-user gas prices, the regulator does not have the power to decide to remove the regulated price.