Eurostat data identifying the biggest energy producers of EU member states and their respective shares has highlighted a delay in Greece’s electricity market liberalization, specifically in the domain of electricity generation.

Greek power utility PPC maintained a 51.3 percent share of the country’s electricity production in 2019 – the year for which most recent data is available – placing the country in ninth place among 25 member states, in terms of the size of the leading producer’s market share.

Despite being ranked relatively high on this list, PPC’s share of production, from a long-range perspective, has contracted substantially over the past decade or so.

PPC has shed 33.8 percent since 2010, when its share of total electricity production stood at 85.1 percent. Independent producers began emerging in Greece’s electricity production market about a decade ago.

Similar electricity production share drops, by the leading producers, have also been recorded in other member states.

In Belgium, the share of the country’s top producer fell by 39.5 percent to 39.1 percent during the equivalent period. In France, the top producer’s share fell from 86.5 percent to 65.6 percent, while in Slovakia the dominant producer shed 28 percent of its share.

The biggest decline was registered in Luxembourg, where the leading electricity producer’s share of 85.4 percent in 2010 plummeted to 18.1 percent in 2019.

A full monopoly was maintained on Cyprus with the state-controlled utility representing 100 percent of generation in 2019.

The Cypriot utility, topping the list, was followed by the biggest producers in: Latvia (86.4%), Croatia (80%), Estonia (76.4%), France (65.6%), Czech Republic (60.5%), Slovenia (53%), and Slovakia (52.8%).