Trennung von Infrastruktur und Betrieb - Bundesverband Öffentliche ...

companies (mostly in partnership with Electrabel). Most of the operational
tasks were de facto taken in charge by the private companies.
� In the electricity sector, the Belgian Government set up a new private
enterprise, ELIA, in charge of the network. ELIA is a mixed enterprise
with as shareholders: Electrabel (30%), municipalities (30%) and
stock exchange (40%).
� Since Electrabel held capital shares in Elia, a very strong separation
was installed between the ownership and the management, the latter
remaining largely out of control of the Board composed half of people
linked to shareholders and half of directors independent from the
shareholders.
This organization looks a little like the banking sector where the operational
responsibilities rest on the executive board of management
and not on the board of directors.
� Before 2000, a so-called Control Committee, the CCGE, composed
mainly of delegates from the public authorities, from trade unions and
from customers, was in charge of price fixing and investment programming.
The new system put in place was a cultural shock.
A new mode of regulation had to be implemented and accepted. But implementing
this new regulatory framework appears to be quite difficult for
several reasons:
1. A regulator is suffering from a very strong asymmetry of information.
To a very large extent, the regulated enterprise knows the situation
much better than the regulator and it tends to give only the elements
of information it wants or it is forced to give.
To be in a better position, the regulator may use several
means/instruments:
� benchmarking studies, which can however be quite expensive;
� build up an internal (costly) expertise with a team of lawyers, technical
experts and economists; hiring this expertise is quite easy
especially if you can offer an attractive wage and employee benefit
package but keeping the people after a few years of experience is
much harder because they may receive very attractive job propositions
from the regulated industry to cope with the regulator;
� count on external expertise: this is of course feasible, but not a
real solution since it is often more expensive; the consultancy
company often uses information and results from expertise already
55