Energy companies: Increasing sales, increasing profits, increasing prices. Is competition lacking?

The topic "energy price" has become very explosive recently. High energy prices damage both consumers and the economy. The energy companies point to high taxes and fiscal charges as well as to the price explosion on the world markets for mineral oil and to the expensive measures to reduce CO2 emissions. Berthold A. Bonekamp, Chairman of the Executive Board of RWE Energy AG, believes that competition on the electricity market in Germany, which has been completely liberalized since 1998, is ensured. After initially strongly falling wholesale prices, since 2000 prices have risen again. Liberalised markets do not produced political prices, as many now demand, but are governed by supply and demand. And energy is a limited resource. A different opinion is taken by Alois Rhiel, Minister of Economics, Transport and Regional Development in Hesse. The increasing price of electricity is caused, to be sure, by increasing taxes and fiscal charges on electricity, but they are also the result of the absence of genuine competition in the generation of electricity. In the period after the liberalisation of the electricity market, politicians failed to achieve genuine and effective competition in the electricity generation sector. Larger companies managed to push market newcomers and smaller electricity providers aside with their price policies. Now it is up to the state to create a better regulatory environment. The state should no longer take the side of monopolists and oligopolists. For this reason Hesse will launch a legislative initiative in the coming weeks in the Bundesrat to sharpen the stipulations of the Law against the Restriction of Competition (GWB). The President of the Federal Cartel Office, Bernhard Heitzer, refers competition in the electricity and gas sector as not "satisfactorily". He makes reference to the measures to combat cartels and to monitor abuses.