This report analyses 83 key judgments of the highest administrative court for energy cases in the Netherlands - the Appeals Tribunal for Trade and Industry (hereafter: CBB) - to examine how the CBB has lived up to the EU law principle of effective legal protection in practice in the energy...

The Netherlands is an early mover in healthcare liberalisation. It has a dual policy towards competition enforcement in the sector: not only the general competition rules (the prohibitions on cartels and the abuse of dominance, and merger control) but also rules of sector specific competition...

This paper aims, first, to chart the establishment case law of the European court and its impact on the “supply side” of healthcare provision. This shows that the development of this line of case law is slow and piecemeal: although on the one hand non-discriminatory rules are now caught by...

Economic regulation by independent regulatory authorities is justified in a legal sense by theories based on delegation, (partial) ministerial responsibility and judicial review, or more recently on regulatory contracts and stakeholder representation. While none of these models is fully...

In its BUPA Case of February 2008 the Court of First Instance set a new standard for assessing whether public service compensation constitutes a state aid and/or is covered by the exception for services of general economic interest. At issue was risk equalisation between providers of private...

Distribution of electricity constitutes an essential link in the energy sector value chain for which Distribution System Operators (DSOs) bear the responsibility. While executing that role, DSOs are expected to take into consideration public values, such as the availability, affordability and...

Water is an exhaustible natural resource. Access to clean, safe and affordable water must be managed nowadays not only to avoid any unnecessary use of water, but also allow for continuous supply of such an important factor of public well-being. In recent years, water-related activities acquired...

The electricity sector is in a transition towards a Smart Energy System where the roles of private and institutional actors are evolving. This work deals with the influence of some technological innovations on the regulation of the energy sector. It identifies the main radical innovations in the...

In 2013, the CJEU ruled on the ‘Lyocentre' case touching upon an important and contemporary issue in the EU Medical Device regime – the classification issue between medical devices and medicinal products. This problem is connected with the internal market v. protection of health dilemma as...

Where the provision of healthcare services involves undertakings (entities engaged in the provision of goods and/or services on a market) these are subject to the EU state aid rules. State aid questions are raised in particular regarding the compensation for public service provision, which may...