Book Description
This paper provides a comparative assessment of market functioning and market integration in EU Member States in network industries, i.e. telecommunications, energy and transport sectors. The first section assesses Member States' progress in market opening and competition and highlights potential market distortions that can hinder the proper functioning of these markets. The analysis shows that over the last years overall improvements in the regulatory and competitive environment was achieved, especially in the telecommunications sector. However, additional efforts are needed, especially in some Member States. The second section empirically investigates whether any relevant price convergence across Member States took place in the EU network industries. Econometric results show that prices converged to the mean in all analysed subsectors. However, in some Member States country-specific factors prevented prices in each of the sectors from fully converging to the same level. The speed of convergence was higher in the transport and energy subsectors and lower in the telecommunications sector.