ABSTRACT
While government intervention in the energy sector has traditionally been strong, both through public ownership and regulation, recent years have seen some fundamental changes in a number of countries, focusing in particular on privatisation and liberalisation. On the one hand, the interest in liberalisation has formed part of a general move to reduce state involvement in industry (especially the utility industries), through privatisation and/or by opening markets to competitors. On the other hand, liberalisation has been an essential ingredient of the completion of the internal market in the European Union (EO). Energy has been considered an important commodity for which free movement should be achieved. In both cases, deregulation is an important component of the strategies, although in reality, the issue is effectively one of reregulation rather than deregulation as such.
