September 7, 2012
International Business
Case #2
The European Energy Market
1. What do you think are the economic benefits of liberalizing the EU energy market? Who stands to gain the most from liberalization? * I think that by liberalizing the EU energy market, all energy companies can buy energy from the cheapest source and also customers have more choices in where they want to purchase their energy from which will in turn increase competition. 2. What are the implications of liberalization for energy producers in the EU? How will the environment they face change post-liberalization. What actions will they have to take? * The implications of liberalization for energy producers in the EU is that it will eventually replace the markets of the 27 members states by a single continent-wide market for electricity and gas. The environment they face will have to deal with disputes between governments being protective over their firms because bigger governments are going to want to buy smaller ones. Some actions that they would have to take to simply form alliances. 3. Why is the de-integration of large energy companies seen as such an important part of any attempt to liberalize the EU energy market? * I think that de-integration of the bigger companies will encourage the smaller companies to be more active and permit the market to be fair and equal. It could also increase affordability and dependability of the service by permitting new introduction of new operators within the energy market. 4. Why do you think progress toward the liberalization of the EU energy market has been fairly slow so far? * Counties have been trying to protect their small energy firms from the biggest groups of the others making liberalization fairly