The European Commission is publishing a study Thursday to analyze the electric vehicle charging market, antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager said at a conference in Brussels.
“We are publishing an extensive study into the market for electric vehicle charging,” Vestager said, adding that charging networks “will become vital pieces of infrastructure” as the bloc works to attract new electric vehicle manufacturing businesses and reach its target of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.
The study will look into “how infrastructure is being funded, and the stakes for competition enforcement and the protection of incentives to invest,” she said, and help the Commission to “identify potential competition concerns early on.”
The EU is aiming for a 2035 ban on new polluting cars and vans that will require far more charging stations for electric cars.
Italy’s competition authority last week opened an abuse of dominance probe into Italian energy giant Enel over pricing that may aim to curb rivals for electric car charging. Spain and France are also looking at the electric vehicle charging network.
Germany’s Federal Cartel Office called in 2021 for more competition for charging infrastructure and Austrian regulators last year warned that the dominance of energy companies in that sector could result in anticompetitive practices. The U.K. Competition and Markets Authority has also issued recommendations to improve competition in the industry.
This article has been corrected to state that the EU’s net-zero goal is for 2050.
