Brussels, 25/08/2008 (Agence Europe) - On Friday 22 August, the European Commission announced that it had authorised the proposed joint venture between European Market Coupling Company (EMCC), three transmission system operators - Energinet.dk of Denmark, E.ON Netz GmbH of Germany and Vattenfall Europe Transmission GmbH of Germany - and two energy exchanges, North Pool Spot AS of Norway and European Energy Exchange AG (EEX) of Germany.
The new entity will provide congestion management, services for crossborder electricity transmission systems and would be a platform for secondary trading of transmission rights. In principle, the market coupling between German and Nordic countries will allow optimisation of the crossborder flows of electricity and allow buyers and sellers on a power exchange to have automatic access to crossborder energy trade without having to acquire the corresponding transmission capacity. According to the Commission, the operation entails no horizontal overlap between the transmission networks of the participating electricity transmission system operators, and will not heighten the risk of any coordinated behaviour between the vertically integrated energy groups. (A.B./transl.jl)