The Belgian prime minister Guy Verhofstadt has held a working breakfast with the EU competition commissioner Neelie Kroes in which he reiterated the need for competition in the Belgian market to be maintained in the face of the Suez-GdF merger.
The AFX news agency reports Mr Verhofstadt’s demands for rapid concessions from Suez even before the merger goes through. Suez is the parent company of Belgian power market leader Electrabel, while GdF owns a significant stake in SPE, another leading Belgian electricity player.
We want solutions right now, Mr Verhofstadt was quoted as saying by AFX, adding, we don’t want to wait until the end of the [EU Commission’s investigation] procedure to obtain concessions from Suez.
Meanwhile the country’s energy minister, who also attended the meeting with Ms Kroes, said that he wanted to see three major players active in the country’s energy market.