From Florence Forum to Florence Process: a look back

Market reforms in European electricity sector have profoundly changed the sector and how it is regulated. When Florence forum came into practice in 1998, it introduced a new concept of regulation: based on open discussion and consensus of every stakeholder. During 10 years, Florence Forum has not only popularized successfully regulation by cooperation as an innovative form of regulating the electricity sector, but it also gave birth to several important ldquoby-productsrdquo, namely CEER/ERGEG, mini-fora, Regional Initiatives. They, in turn, influence back to the forum and evolve it into a Florence process where regulators, together with stakeholders, exchange opinions, information and apply regulatory techniques to direct the European market reforms. In this paper, we summarized the 10 years history of Florence forum to the current privilege platform in understanding European electricity liberalization. We also tried to generalize main factors which contribute to the meaningful role of the Florence process in the European electricity sector.