Long before Mayor Daley began the great Chicago sell-off, cities across Europe had been experimenting with the privatization of public assets. Many of those early long-term leases of water, electrical systems, and other public utilities are about to expire. And Inter-Press Service reports that are planning to take them back. In the German state of Bavaria, officials are ready to pull the plug on some 2,000 public utility licenses that were handed over to private companies just two decades ago. Meanwhile, officials from the town of Ottobrunn, just outside of Munich, have decided to launch a publicly-run electrical system after concluding that "the selling of the municipal utilities to private companies, which only obey the shareowners' interest, has proven to be a mistake." How long until Chicago officials come to a similar conclusion about Daley's privatization spree?