Independent Regulatory Authorities: A Comparative Study of European Energy Regulators

ndependent regulatory authorities are widely recommended as part of the institutional design of liberalised energy markets - not least by the European Commission. This report describes and compares the regulatory authorities for energy in the EU. Arguments for regulatory independence are presented and discussed, and an index is developed to measure the degree of conformance to theories of regulatory independence. It is established that the main pattern of variation is that countries, which formerly had strong state-owned companies, have chosen to create regulatory authorities at state level with many institutional safeguards for independence.