What kind of discriminatory treatment was found by the sector inquiry?
The EC received a number of allegations that vertically integrated incumbents have discriminated against new entrants. Some new entrants reported, for instance, that network operators grant their affiliated supply companies preferential treatment for access to available firm capacities on transit routes. This can be done either through straight-forward refusals to capacity reservation requests or indirectly through price increases for smaller quantities as well as stricter conditions in the balancing regimes. Other new entrants reported a lack of transparency on the secondary market, which makes capacity reservations more difficult. The lack of transparency concerns available capacities over entire periods of long-term reservations, publication of bottlenecks, physical congestion of interconnectors as well as transport interruptions. Such data, when being made available within the same group, can provide the affiliated shippers with important competitive advantages over independent thi
