Regulating Energy Supranationally: EU Energy Policy

Abstract

In November 2010, the European Commission published a “communication” on “Energy 2020” intended to inform the other main EU institutions about its “strategy for competitive, sustainable and secure energy”. Although the authors of this document stated that “a common EU energy policy has evolved around the common objective to ensure the uninterrupted physical availability of energy products and services on the market, at a price which is affordable for all consumers (private and industrial), while contributing to the EU’s wider social and climate goals” and that “the central goals for energy policy (security of supply, competitiveness, and sustainability) are now laid down in the Lisbon Treaty” – i.e. Art. 194 of the Treaty on the functioning of the European Union (TFEU) – they were in serious doubt whether “the existing strategy was likely to achieve all the 2020 targets”, and they thought it “wholly inadequate to the longer term challenges”. So since “EU energy and climate goals have been incorporated into the Europe 2020 Strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth, adopted by the European Council in June 2010, and into its flagship initiative ‘Resource efficient Europe’”, the “urgent task” for the EU should be “to agree the tools which will make the necessary shift possible and thus ensure that Europe can emerge from recession on a more competitive, secure and sustainable path”.