France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg signed an agreement Wednesday to increasingly link their power grids making it easier to trade electricity across national borders. EU Energy Commissioner Andris Pieblags hailed the deal as the “founding stone of the largest integrated regional energy market in Europe, which will bring lower prices for consumers, increased security of supply and will attract investment in new generation capacity and transmission infrastructure.” The agreement was signed on the margins of an EU energy ministers meeting. Not much electricity is currently sold across national borders in Europe. If a utility in one nation buys power across the border, it needs to buy capacity the space on a grid to actually transport that electricity at a separate auction. Under the new agreement, electricity and capacity will be bought simultaneously. The deal adds the German and Luxembourg power grids to a deal linking those of France, Belgium and the Netherlands that was signed last February. Expansion to Scandinavia and to the grids of Spain and Portugal will be next. “Once the market is coupled with Eastern Europe through Germany, important progress will have been made in creating a European wholesale market functioning in a fairly harmonized way,” said Pieblags.