Frankfurt - The German EEX energy exchange has expanded its list of Southeastern European members, signing up the first Greek company and another Slovenian firm to deal in its spot electricity market, the bourse said yesterday. The two are Greece’s leading power utility Public Power Corporation SA (PPC) and Slovenia’s Istrabenz-Gorenje. “Handing out a license to the first trading participant from Greece is a further step to strengthen the link with the Eastern and Southeastern European markets,” an EEX statement said. Christos Poseidon, Public Power Corporation’s director of energy management, told Reuters that Public Power Corporation was planning mainly to export electricity to Germany. “We did not join the spot market to speculate. We joined as a Greek generator,” Poseidon said in a telephone interview, adding that Public Power Corporation had not yet started trading. European electricity trading is expanding as wholesale markets have overcome earlier credibility risks and as bourses standardize products, a consultancy report said last week. Germany, continental Europe’s leading power market, last year traded 2,500 terawatt hours (TWh) of which 2,100 were in the OTC market and 400 TWh on bourses. The volume was equivalent to five times the underlying physical demand of 500 TWh. Traders forecast an overall volume rise to 2,500-3,000 TWh this year and possibly approaching 3,000 TWh in 2005.