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Market Building through Antitrust investigates the role of antitrust policy in the building of competitive energy markets in Europe. By looking at the specific problem of long-term supply and access contracts in the electricity sector, the book questions the suitability of antitrust policy as a market building tool. It shows that the institutional infrastructure that pre-dated competitive reform and the politics of liberalization have largely shaped the current dynamics at work in European energy regulatory practice. In particular, antitrust law has increasingly been used as a quasi-ex ante regulatory tool, thereby raising problems in terms of economic efficiency, legal certainty and political legitimacy.