Abstract:
More, not less, competition in the EU's gas markets is required to achieve a Single Market and to therefore reduce Europe's vulnerability to gas supply cuts originating in Russia. In particular, the East-West divide within the EU in terms of competition policy revealed in this paper must be overcome. The authors investigate the relationship between the level of competition in the gas markets of the EU member states and their vulnerability to supply cuts from Russia's monopoly company Gazprom, which is behind most of the recent gas supply disruptions in the EU. Most markets in Central and Eastern Europe are locked into a tight one-way relationship with Gazprom, not only as sole supplier of gas, but also as investor in the domestic markets, and through long term supply contracts. All incentives in the local gas markets are skewed in such a way as to favour Gazprom. Based on these insights, the paper launches a new "Index of Vulnerability to Gazprom Supply Cuts". The scores of the individual EU member states in this index show that the more the national gas market structure it monopolised, the greater a country is likely to suffer from gas supply disruptions (...)