Brussels on Tuesday trained its legal artillery on European Union member states in one of the biggest judicial barrages ever mounted by the EU executive to chase up recalcitrant governments. The legal proceedings launched by the Commission cover not only energy, but also telecommunications, gambling and tobacco advertising in order to combat spreading economic nationalism in the EU’s single market. But the Commission’s core concern is energy, where no fewer than 17 governments have been served with formal letters of complaint at their failure to follow existing EU legislation to open up their gas and electricity markets.

Tuesday’s moves dramatise how far Europe is from its agreed goal to achieve total liberalisation by mid-2007. The urgency of the liberalisation challenge is not just because that deadline is now so near, and progress to date so feeble. It is also because only a competitive market can enable Europe to minimise waste and maximise resources so that it can cope with the pressures of rising prices, uncertain supply and climate change in the energy market. That is why Brussels is pursuing certain governments for failing to encourage renewable energy and to hold sufficient oil stocks as well as to liberalise.