... Market integration still insufficient
Although liberalisation has shown some benefits EU electricity prices are lower now than 1997 levels – much more remains to be done. Two key indicators lead to this conclusion: significant price differences within the internal market
low level of cross-border trade in electricity and gas. The starting point for market opening in many Member States was a monopolistic market structure with only one or a few big companies. With a few exceptions, the largest three national companies have a very large share of the market (over 75%) for both electricity and gas in their countries. The high degree of concentration of the industry jeopardizes EU citizens right to choose a supplier in a competitive market. Furthermore, only few Member States have complemented the minimum principles of the directive by additional measures, aimed at making the market work in practice given the specific national circumstances. ...
... Principle II. Reducing market reliance on CRA ratings
Banks, market participants and institutional investors should be expected to make their own credit assessments, and not rely solely or mechanistically on CRA ratings. Central bank operations
Central banks should reach their own credit judgements on the financial instruments that they will accept in market operations, both as collateral and as outright purchases. Principle III.3 Internal limits and investment policies of investment managers and institutional investors
Investment managers and institutional investors must not mechanistically rely on CRA ratings for assessing the creditworthiness of assets. Supervisors should review the margining policies of market participants and central counterparties to guard against undue reliance on CRA ratings. ...
... While Art. 81 TFEU might serve as a basis even for legislation in the field of substantive contract law, the scope of such legislation would be limited to cross-border contracts (see paras. 37 ff.) this appears to be an unattractive perspective for an internal market defined by Art. 26(2) as an "area without internal frontiers" including legal frontiers.
6. Article 114 might however arguably provide the powers needed for options 5 and 6 whereas a civil code would by necessity not only include market-related rules (see paras. 41 ff.).
7. For the time being, politically sensitive contracts such as employment and tenancy contracts as well as transactions with hardly any relevance for the internal market, such as donations, should be excluded from the agenda.
16. ...
... To prevent further drops in government bond prices, the bank should announce that it is ready to intervene in the market. As Goldman Sachs notes, the inability to devalue also rules out a way of adjusting net liability positions that has proved helpful to the US and UK. Worse, the only available mechanism – an “internal devaluation” (or falling domestic price level) – will make the burden of external debt even greater. ...
... This system gives administrators a strong interest in catering to internal constituencies, especially permanent faculty members, while largely insulating them from competition with other institutions. Financing for public universities (which account for 92 percent of the national system in terms of staff and enrollments) is pegged primarily to the numbers of students — who, for reasons of tradition and economics, rarely leave their home regions to attend college, and have therefore served as a virtually captive market. There's practically no social control, so the university can do whatever it wants according to internal pressures." ...
... The EU VAT System and the Internal Market, IBFD, 2009, de De la Feria. ...