Der Grundversorger zwischen Wettbewerb und Gemeinwohl

The European markets for electricity and gas are seeing a growing competition, which raises the question of whether the German basic supplier for grid-bound energy is still an institution worth keeping. After careful consideration of arguments from the fields of network economics and competition theory, this remarkable juridical figure seems to be more and more of a contradiction. Findings from behavioural economics and regulatory theory support this judgment further, but in the end, it is constitutional and European law which makes the German implementation of basic supply by way of a supplier of last resort seem obsolete. After all, there has not been a local monopoly of energy supply by law or in real life for quite some time. The author is an attorney practising in the fields of antitrust and energy law.