Luxembourg, 27/09/2002 (Agence Europe) - A week before EU energy ministers are once more to examine the issue of the liberalisation of the energy markets, Eurostat has just published a report on the electricity sector in EU Member states and in Norway in 1999 and 2000. It emerges that at the end of 2000, countries were split into three groups depending on the degree to which they had opened up their markets (measured as a percentage of total electricity consumed by customers free to choose their suppliers in electricity): five countries were liberalised up to the tune of 100% (Germany, Finland, Sweden, the United Kingdom and Norway); ten presented a degree of openness of between 30% and 45% (Belgium, Denmark, Spain, France, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Austria and Portugal); as for Greece, it was to begin its liberalisation process in February 2001. The report also states that the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Austria had the largest number of companies with a market share of at least 5%, both in generation and distribution. For both activities, Greece, France and Ireland only had one company with a market share of at least 5%. That was also the case for Portugal regarding supply. As for generation, the greatest market share of the largest company was observed in Greece and Ireland (97%). In Belgium and France, this figure was also in excess of 90%. The lowest market share was recorded in Finland (23%), followed by Austria (33%), Germany (34%) and Denmark (36%). Regarding supply, the market share of the largest company varied from 100% in Greece and Portugal to 11% in Finland and 17% in Denmark. Finally, Eurostat states that net total electricity generation in the EU was 2.47 million GWh in 2000. The main producers were Germany (21.6% of the total), France (20.9%), and the United Kingdom (14.5%). Regarding trade in electricity and taking account of the balance between exports and imports, the main net importers were Italy (-44,347 GWh), the Netherlands (-17,850 GWh), the United Kingdom (-14,174 GWh) and Finland (-11,880 GWh), whereas the main exporters were France (69,479 GWh) and Austria (1,296 GWh). Norway was also a net exporter (19,055 GWh).