Large European utilities such as E.ON and EDF will not face European Union pressure to split into smaller firms, EU Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs said on Monday.
The EU Commission and member states with large utilities such as Germany or France reached a compromise last year over plans by the EU Commission to force utilities to sell their energy grids - their most reliable earnings generator.
The compromise means that utilities do not necessarily have to sell their grids but must introduce strict organisational and management divisions between their grids and other operations. A proposal by Germany's liberal party FDP to allow German antitrust regulators to break up companies deemed too large had also sparked speculation that big utilities could be affected.