Long-term energy supply contracts in European competition policy: Fuzzy not crazy
Adrien de Hauteclocque and
Jean-Michel Glachant ()
Energy Policy, 2009, vol. 37, issue 12, 5399-5407
Abstract:
Long-term supply contracts often have ambiguous effects on the competitive structure, investment and consumer welfare in the long term. In the new market context, these effects are likely to be worsened and thus even harder to assess. Since liberalization and especially since the release of the Energy Sector Inquiry in early 2007, the portfolio of long-term supply contracts of the former incumbents have become a priority for review by the European Commission and the national competition authorities. It is widely believed that European Competition authorities take a dogmatic view on these contracts and systemically emphasize the risk of foreclosure over their positive effects on investment and operation. This paper depicts the methodology that has emerged in the recent line of cases and argues that this interpretation is largely misguided. It shows that a multiple-step approach is used to reduce regulation costs and balance anti-competitive effects with potential efficiency gains. However, if an economic approach is now clearly implemented, competition policy is constrained by the procedural aspect of the legal process and the remedies imposed remain open for discussion.
Keywords: Long-term; contracts; Competition; policy; European; union (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)
Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301-4215(09)00581-3
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
Related works:
Working Paper: Long-term Energy Supply Contracts in European Competition Policy: Fuzzy not Crazy (2009) 
Working Paper: Long-term Energy Supply Contracts in European Competition Policy: Fuzzy not Crazy (2009) 
Working Paper: Long-term Energy Supply Contracts in European Competition Policy: Fuzzy not Crazy (2008) 
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:enepol:v:37:y:2009:i:12:p:5399-5407
Access Statistics for this article
Energy Policy is currently edited by N. France
More articles in Energy Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().