Abstract -  In the last decade the EU has started to liberalise national gas markets and regulatory reform has followed in member countries. We analyse the basic issues concerning network and storage regulation and the implementation of regulatory reforms in Italy. Then we try to explain why in gas importing countries such reforms were not sufficient to foster competition. Even regulation ex-post by the Competition Commission has proved to be a formidable task, to the extent that entry barriers in the market for imports depend on congestion of transit pipelines still controlled by the incumbent. Moreover when gas supply is characterised by long run importing contracts with take or pay clauses, liberalisation policies lead to entry and market segmentation without benefits for consumers. In order to foster gas to gas competition the development of wholesale exchanges at market hubs is then necessary. However new investments in essential facilities are required to reach this aim. At present new investments are both subsidised and exempted from third party access regulation for financial reasons but we claim that the incentive to invest is negatively affected lack of ownership unbundling.