COMMISSION STAFF WORKING DOCUMENT Energy prices and costs report

In 2012 the dispersion - measured as standard deviation divided by mean - was about 0.30 in the case of retail price of electricity and gas (including taxes in the case of households and excluding VAT and recoverable taxes in the case of industry), while it was below 0.1 in the case of motor fuels (including taxes). [...] For the large majority of Member States the share of taxes and levies is still below 10% of ex-VAT prices, even though for Germany, Italy and 14 Austria it exceeds 20% In the case of households, the taxes and levies component of the EU weighted average price went up by 36.5% and its share accounts on average for 30% of the final price (up from 26% in 2008). [...] In an open and competitive retail market the energy component of the end consumer price (Figure 1) for electricity would reflect generation costs, as represented by an efficiently 27 functioning wholesale market and the quality of services provided by the energy supplier; the network component would reflect the costs of the efficient operation and balancing of the transmission and distribution gri. [...] A strong and relatively quick pass-through of any persistent, long term change of the wholesale benchmark to the energy component in the retail price would indicate a good / normal 27 The part of the consumer bill related to the supply of energy is in fact the only component where suppliers can actually compete. [...] The factors slowing down the completion of the retail segment of the internal market are also contributing to the generally negative perception of consumers with regards to the quality of the service provided.