Munich-based E.ON Energie is the lead company of our Central Europe market unit and is responsible for managing our business in Central Europe, which consists of power generation, transmission, distribution, and sales as well as natural gas distribution and sales. E.ON Energie’s operations stretch from the Atlantic Ocean to the Black Sea. It has subsidiaries in the Netherlands, France, Germany, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, Bulgaria, and Romania, and other European countries. It supplies energy to some 17 million customer accounts, about half of them outside Germany. After Germany, E.ON Energie’s second-biggest market is Hungary, where it has over 3 million electricity and gas customers.

Central European Energy Market

One of the biggest challenges facing Europe’s energy industry is the creation of an EU-wide internal market for energy encompassing more than 20 countries, which in some cases vary considerably by market structure and degree of competition. Europe has many large players, some of them state-owned. Under European law, the energy markets of EU member states were supposed to have been fully liberalized by mid-2007. Nevertheless, competitive conditions continue to vary by country. Germany, due in part to E.ON’s initiatives, has one of Europe’s most competitive energy markets. E.ON Energie is already superbly positioned to compete in Germany and Europe.