A third package of energy laws to complete the European Union internal energy market would take years to implement and may not result in genuine improvements, EU energy commissioner Andris Piebalgs told an industry seminar in Brussels in September. "You don't always get what you want," said Piebalgs, referring to the lengthy negotiation process that invariably ends with a watered-down directive lacking the integrity of the original proposal. There was a huge gap between EU member states' political will and the European Commissionational regulators' intentions, Piebalgs said: "I think the lack of interconnection indicates that the markets are not liberalized enough." Member state governments had underestimated how difficult it was to open energy markets to competition, but there was no going back to old protectionist days: "monopolies are no longer on the agenda."
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