•  
  •  
 

Abstract

After briefly describing the essential mandates of the relevant EC directives, this Article discusses the novel-for-Italy independent regulatory commissions that are critical to the developing competitive frameworks for electricity and telecommunication. It then reviews applicable substantive law for each of the electricity and telecommunication sectors, and offers examples of how the independent regulatory commissions are working to shape competitive markets. Italy's independent regulatory commissions have resulted in a reorganization of its electric and telecommunication sectors quite different than that contemplated as recently as the early 1990s. Italy's creation of its new independent regulatory commissions, as well as the mixed experience of its Law No. 9 of 1991 experiment with non-ENEL power plants have shaped: the initiatives that ENEL's own management has taken to restructure and reposition ENEL; recent regulation relative to restructuring of the electric sector as a whole; and the terms of the mandated break up of ENEL. As for telecommunications, the acquisition of Telecom Italia - Italy's former State-held monopoly, via a hostile, bank-funded takeover - and the entrance of new players in the exploding fields of cellular and fixed line telephony provide evidence that the new institutional arrangements are beginning to produce the desired competitive markets.

Share

COinS