> rules of the European Energy Market where all electricity has to be as expensive as the most expensive source.
aren't all/most electricity market working this way (pricing based on marginal price, aka pay-as-clear)?
pay-as-bid has other potential issues and might not be better.
Yes, but that's assuming that there should be a free electricity market.
The fundamental issue with electricity markets is that they cannot rely on any signal other than the electricity price to control whether a given plant will be running at a given time or not.
I think a real alternative would be to set-up an entity charged with negotiating prices with the electricity producers (which would also be a sort of partial reversal on the whole market thing in a lot of countries).