
Transmission grids - license to make money instead of duty to regulate?
From the end of the 1990s, Germany was at the forefront of the EU in "privatizing" its electricity transmission grids. In other words, the federal and state governments sold the extra-high-voltage lines, which had previously been financed by citizens through electricity prices, to "private investors", including the Dutch royal family, Belgian municipalities and Ärzteversorgung Nordrhein-Westfalen.