“The household price for heating oil in Greece reached 1,266 euros per 1,000 liters (264 gallons) in the second quarter of 2012, surging 48 percent from a year earlier, according to the International Energy Agency. Greeks pay both excise and value-added taxes on heating oil that can make up 42 percent of the total cost. Greece’s oil prices are high because of laws that protect the country’s two refining companies and prevent competition, said Pavlos Eleftheriadis, a lecturer in law at the University of Oxford in England, who studies monopolies. ‘The Greek political system works for the insiders,’ said Eleftheriadis, a native of Greece.”
http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2012/12/in-greece-crony-capitalists-will.html
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