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In the context of the creation of an internal European electricity market, the existence or sufficient cross-border transmission capacities and their efficient utilisation gain crucial importance. Historically, transmission system operators (TSOs) have not designed the interconnections between their networks primarily to facilitate bulk power trade, but rather to achieve better reliability and efficiency of supply through co-operation among them. Hence, the introduction of open access to transmission networks has made a number of bottlenecks in cross-border transmission capacity visible that can have an adverse effect on competition and thus on the integration of the internal market. On this background, the European Commission has assigned the authors to carry out a comprehensive investigation on electricity transmission capacities between the EU member states plus Norway and Switzerland, with the objectives to analyse the approaches applied by TSOs to determine the operationally utilisable levels of cross-border transmission capacity, among others for the purpose of publishing net transfer capacities (NTCs), and to propose possible improvements, to identify bottlenecks in the cross-border transmission systems and to categorise them into critical and less critical ones, to investigate the present and future demand for additional transmission capacity specifically at the locations of the critical bottlenecks, and to identify and evaluate possibilities to increase the level of usable cross-border transmission capacity at the critical locations, including so-called 'soft measures' that require no or only insignificant investments, investment options other than new lines, like the installation of power flow controllers or the reinforcement of existing connections, as well as the construction of new lines, taking into account also projects that have been identified as projects of common interest in the context of the 'Trans-European Networks' (TEN) programme. The conclusions that the authors have drawn from the whole of their investigations can be subdivided into observations, general recommendations and border-specific recommendations. Essential observations about the determination of cross-border transmission capacity are: There is an important difference between indicative, non-binding NTC values published by ETSO twice a year, and capacity values used for the actual allocation of transmission rights at individual borders. All TSOs apply a uniform basic concept for the determination of cross-border transmission capacity. There is however significant space for individual interpretation and parameterisation of this concept. As regards the identification of bottlenecks, the authors could gather sufficient information on the frequency and severity of congestion to come to a relatively clear distinction between critical and less critical bottlenecks. They have identified the following five interconnections as 'critical', being relevant for the further investigation: France -> Spain, France ->Belgium & Belgium/Germany <--> Netherlands (to be analysed in combination), Denmark <--> Germany, France/Switzerland/Austria(/Slovenia) ->Italy, and Norway <--> Sweden.