PRESSURE mounted on Europe’s utility giants yesterday as Neelie Kroes, the EU’s Competition Commissioner, hinted that raids launched by inspectors last month had revealed evidence of anti-competitive activity.
Ms Kroes said that the Commission would be taking up the evidence with the energy companies. “We found issues that we are not pleased with, or not in line with what we expect them to do,” she said.
The Commission gave no details on what it had discovered in raids conducted on the headquarters of leading utilities including Germany’s Ruhrgas and RWE, Gaz de France, Fluxys and Distrigaz of Belgium and Italy’s ENI.
When it launched its inquiry the Commission made clear that it suspected that dominant utilities were excluding competitors from pipelines and storage facilities in the gas sector. It also suspected that large firms were carving up markets with competitors to the detriment of consumers.
Sources within the Commission indicated that it would be several months before any action was taken as the inspectors sifted through a mountain of data collected in the raids.
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In Moscow lawmakers in the Duma, Russia’s parliament, passed a Bill that entrenches Gazprom’s monopoly over the export of natural gas.
The Russian utility — the world’s largest gas exporter — already enjoys the exclusive right to market gas for export and the Bill was seen yesterday as a rebuke to European governments that have sought to put pressure on the Kremlin to open its export market to competitors.