期刊名称：Euro Area Balance of Payments and International Investment Position Statistics
印刷版ISSN：1830-3420
电子版ISSN：1830-3439
出版年度：2005
出版社：European Central Bank
摘要：In the course of the 1990s, the European Union (EU) embarked on an ambitious regulatory reform programme for a number of European network industries, such as telecommunications, energy and transport.1 All these sectors are characterised by the presence of a bottleneck infrastructure with natural monopoly characteristics, which makes it difficult to introduce and safeguard competition in these industries.2 However, further progress with regulatory reforms in these sectors designed to enhance the level of competition is an important part of the Lisbon agenda for economic reform launched by the European Council in 2000.3 The importance attached to network industries within the overall Lisbon reform process stems from the fact that the potential benefits of successful reforms in these sectors are very substantial. This is due to two reasons. First, network industries are a sizeable part of the overall economy. Taken together, these sectors represent around 10% (9%) of EU15 (euro area) production and almost 7% of overall EU15 and euro area employment. Furthermore, they represent around 7% of the EU15 and euro area HICP baskets (see Section 2.1). Second, besides their actual economic weight, it is a common feature of network industries that they provide important inputs for a wide range of economic sectors, which further increases their economic importance. The economic implications of the regulatory reform process in these industries are therefore also of considerable importance for the ECB.
