In 2024, the development of the Price Calculation Information System (HAI) continued, with the goal of automating the process of approving and monitoring prices for district heating, water, gas, and electricity network services, with the aim to make the process more transparent and efficient. The ARIS project was launched in cooperation with the European Union Agency for the Cooperation of Energy Regulators (ACER) and the Centre of Registers and Information Systems (RIK), to enhance the Competition Authority’s ability to monitor and analyze the offers made by market participants on the electricity exchange.
The authority actively participated in the Water Sector Reform 2025+ projects, contributing to the development of incentives, performance indicators, and benchmarking data. We also took part in discussions regarding reforms in the postal and district heating sectors.
Compared to the previous couple of years, the total number of administrative procedures and actions carried out by the Regulatory Division slightly decreased in 2024, amounting to 854 in total, mainly due to a reduction in complaints and inquiries.
As energy and fuel prices declined, regulatory efforts focused proactively on ensuring that these price reductions were passed on to consumers.
In the field of merger control, the number of proceedings began to increase again, which indicates an improvement in the overall economic situation. A total of 47 merger approval decisions were issued.
One of the Authority’s ongoing strategic goals is to ensure that out actions result in tangible monetary savings for consumers. In 2023, the Competition Authority joined the European Commission’s customer savings calculation project. The European Commission has been calculating customer savings generated by the activities of competition authorities for over a decade. The European Commission’s methodology assesses potential customer savings in three areas – prohibited mergers, detected cartels and abuses of dominant market position (antitrust). An analysis of the period 2020–2022 showed that consumers saved almost 45 million euros as a result of competition supervision. In 2023, the corresponding figure was 36 million euros.
The 2024 figures will be released in the second half of 2025.
Subtopics:
Competition Division
Regulatory Division