The paper summarizes liberalization and EU gas market opening along with its prospects and forecasts. In order to establish a single European gas market, EU Directives must be observed. Furthermore, the objective of Europe\u27s energy policy is the provision of sustainable, secure and competitive energy to European consumers. The European gas sector is committed to ensuring that natural gas - with strong environmental advantages - is able to play its full part in a competitive, secure and sustainable energy sector. As regards competitiveness, the European gas sector is ensuring a competitive and non-discriminatory energy market, within which gas plays an important part. A successful internal market is essential to the competitiveness of Europe and contributes to investment in infrastructure to support supply security, efficiency and service. In a competitive energy market, environmental concerns are addressed through market-based instruments. The paper also contains an analysis of the recent changes in the structure of gas demand and supply and its consequences for enhancing the competition in the EU gas market. It discusses the role of growing gas demand, taxation of gas production and trade along with the dependency of the EU gas sector. Liberalisation of the gas market is a very important tool which contributes to the development of the European economy, in order to achieve its goals of efficiency and competitiveness in an ever- increasing global marketplace. Clearly, the implementation of the EU Gas Directive can be viewed as a final step by the EU to accomplish an internal market for gas. 7he major objective is to promote increasing competition in the natural gas market, and to reduce gas prices for all customers and thereby to increase the competitiveness of (energy intensive) European industries and economies. Moreover, this paper discusses prospects for increased consumption of natural gas and future trends of the European gas market within the European Union (EU) up to 2030, presuming that the liberalization effects can provide positive results on functioning of the European Gas Sector and thus contribute to a much lower increase in gas prices.
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