The Regional Initiatives are a flagship own-initiative project of the energy regulators to speed up the integration of Europe's national energy markets. Launched  with the support of the European Commission (in Spring 2006), the  Regional Initiatives create 7 electricity and 3 gas regional markets as a staging post towards a single-EU energy market.  The Regional Initiatives were the concrete results of ERGEG public consultations on creating regional electricity markets and a roadmap to a competitive gas market.

The Regional Initiatives deliver concrete results
Through these regions, specific barriers to trade and competition (such as a lack of transparency and diffferent balancing regimes) are tackled by each country working with its neighbours, and solutions found so as to improve market integration. The Regional Initiatives are already delivering significant improvements e.g. in the area of managing bottlenecks, calculating and allocating grid capacity, and making much needed information (e.g. about capacity) available to the market.

The involvement of stakeholders is crucial to the success of the Regional Initiatives
The Regional Initiatives are set up in a way which helps ensure that stakeholders are effectively engaged. They bring together regulators, the European Commission, Member State governments, companies and other relevant parties to focus on developing and implementing solutions to improve the way in which regional energy markets develop. ERGEG continuously seeks greater stakeholder involvement through Stakeholder Group (SG) meetings, public consultations and ad hoc bilateral meetings.  Informing about progress is an important for maintiaining momentum for the progress already made in the Regional Initiativesand gaining new stakeholder involvement.

Reporting on Progress
Select the dedicated folders for each region with the Electricity Regional Initiative (ERI) or Gas Regional Initiative (GRI) for details of meetings, key achievements in the region.  ERGEG also reports publicly to the annual/bi-annual European Regulatory Fora for electricity (Florence Forum) and gas (Madrid Forum).  A feature of the monthly online newsletter, European Energy Regulators Newsletter, is the quarterly update of all regions, and the monthly Region in the Spotlight. ERGEG and the European Commission co-hosted a Regional Inititiaves conference in 2007 and in 2008. Distinguished speakers included Commissioner Piebalgs and MEPs  Paparizov and  Vidal-Quadras.  See speeches, presentations and photos of the 2008 Regional Initiatives Conference.

Become an online subscriber and stay informed of ERGEG and CEER news including news about the Regional Initiatives. With this functionality you will receive automatic e-mail notification whenever a document is added to your selected electricity or gas region(s). It allows you to stay informed by subscribing to news from the regions of the Regional Initiatives by following 5 simple steps.