Europe's retail gas and power market opening is almost "non-existent," the European Regulators Group for Electricity and Gas said on December 16 in a 2008 status review of EU energy markets. Ergeg found that insufficient unbundling was a major obstacle, while "artificially low regulated prices" persist. Political interference was endangering competition, it said, and national regulators were not independent enough.rnIn power markets where regulated end-user prices were below wholesale market prices, suppliers without low-cost generation capacity or equivalent long-term contracts were not able to make competitive offers. There was no incentive for consumers on regulated prices to switch, and some EU countries such as Spain had seen consumers switch back from the liberalized to the regulated market, said Ergeg.
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