Chapter 3: Infrastructures
Status of liberalization of infrastructure sectors
Chapter 3 sheds light on well-functioning infrastructures. This chapter analyses railways, airports, postal service, electricity, natural gas, district heating, telecommunications, TV distribution, water distribution networks, sewage treatment as well as waste for incineration and waste for landfills.
This chapter compares the quality of the regulatory framework across these sectors. Improved regulatory framework leads to increased competition, which again leads to increased efficiency and lower prices. Consequently, there is an economical profit by improving the regulatory framework.
In recent years some infrastructure sectors have undergone a process of liberalization and are today characterized by increased competition and low prices, and the era of state-owned monopolies seems far away. In other sectors, liberalization has not reached this far.
Among the infrastructures in question, airports and telecommunications have the best regulatory framework, whereas there is a great potential for improvement in the water distribution area and areas related to waste for incineration and waste for landfills. Generally speaking, there seems to be a significant potential of improvement in the Danish infrastructures.
Apart from making an assessment across the sectors, a comparison of Danish regulatory framework in relation to the situation in the 9 other selected European countries has been made. Denmark maintains the same average level as the other countries. Even though there has been focus on exposing Danish infrastructures to competition in recent years, equal focus can be observed in several other countries. But Denmark is placed in the upper end of the scale compared to the other countries, when it comes to the principles of separate ownership and responsibility for regulating the different infrastructures. On the basis of this analysis, this chapter presents several recommendations for changes of rules, regulation and organization.
(Helle Lange, Jesper Mølbæk)