The European natural gas market is characterised by higher demand than available supply from own resources. Therefore Europe is a gas net-importing region. The costs of potential problems or disruptions establish the need for an environment which stimulates sufficient investments in transmission line capacities. We examine the effects of the introduction of the recently developed Hogan, Rosellón and Vogelsang (HRV) incentive mechanism into the European natural gas market. In the simulations with GAMS we can confirm all results expected from theory. The validity of these simulation results is confirmed in a structural analysis, which comprised the variation of different exogenous input parameters. Therefore we conclude that the HRV incentive mechanism as a regulatory regime for the European natural gas market would be an advisable alternative, which should be considered in future discussions. (author's abstract) / Series: Working Papers / Research Institute for Regulatory Economics