Press Release: Antitrust / ENI case: European Commission opens up access to Italy’s natural gas market

The European Commission has opened up access to Italy's natural gas markets by making legally-binding the commitments offered by ENI SpA to settle antitrust proceedings.

The decision will promote healthy competition and potentially lower prices in the supply of gas to companies and to households in Italy. Concretely, ENI will divest its shares in three international transport pipelines to Italy: the TAG, the TENP and the Transitgas pipeline. This will ensure that third-party requests to access the gas pipelines will be dealt with by an entity independent of ENI, the main supplier of gas in Italy. After the recent decisions involving E.ON and RWE in Germany and GDF Suez in France, this is now the ninth major decision since the 2007 energy sector inquiry that had shown consumers and businesses were losing out because of inefficient and expensive markets.