Liberalising the water supply - is an end in sight for Germany's last supply monopoly?

In 1999, the German Ministry of Economics launched a discussion on liberalising the water supply in Germany. In the meantime more and more municipalities are selling shares of the water supplies enterprises they own to private investors. Prof. Hans-Jürgen Ewers and Bettina Mankel, of the Technical University of Berlin, and Eric Heymann, of Deutsche Bank Research, argue in favour of further liberalisation to better utilise efficiency advantages from competition, also for the water supply. For Petra Roth, Mayor of Frankfurt and Vice President of the German Urban Federation (Deutsche Städtetag) and Dr. Wolf Pluge, German Gas and Water Supply Federation, legislation to enforce a liberalisation of the water supply industry is not necessary.