Local impacts of the deregulation and internationalisation of electricity supply on the EU market with some examples from Northern Europe

The main message of this paper is a hypothesis on the growing gap between the local and the European level, between the large scale actors on the European and global market on one side and the local actors, especially the local and regional politicians, on the other. The Nations regulatory body often creates different rules for the electricity market. As a consequence, energy companies have to adjust their business from country to country and within EU. The market trends of electricity and energy in Europe are similar to those of other large scale industries. The common trends are clear: internationalization and deregulation. As lessons are learnt from the local point of view, this paper discusses what the EU and other important, international actors could and should do to strengthen the legitimate rights of the concerned local and regional population, most often through the elected politicians. On the local level we feel more and more as smaller and smaller pawns in a game, often dominated by anonymous and powerful actors. The national political scene is more and more a too limited area also regarding local affairs. The contents of this paper include four points: History (from the Romans and from the Vikings to EU); the history of siting and of closing nuclear facilities; the new Geography of Electricity in Europe, recent trends; and lessons learnt from the trends at the grass-root-level (subsidiarity)