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Exporting the Energy Acquis: The External Agenda Shaping Power of the EU

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Energy Policy Making in the EU

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Energy ((LNEN,volume 28))

Abstract

The development of EU energy policy is facing resistance from different member states. At the same time, the EU is developing an external energy policy with a view to expand its regulatory reach to third states. The EU’s main instrument of this process is the Energy Community (EnC), which establishes a legal and institutional framework for EU rule exportation. These developments raise important questions. Given the difficulties in developing its own energy policy agenda, how successful can the EU’s efforts to shape the energy policy agendas of non-member states be? And how can we explain success and failure of the EU’s efforts? This chapter discusses how the EU exerts external agenda shaping power from a governance and framing perspective. The empirical part examines EU external agenda shaping success with regard to four energy policy measures across EnC members and observers. The results show that the EU was indeed able to influence the energy policy agendas of third states, albeit to varying degrees. While EU membership provides a powerful incentive for third states to adopt EU energy policies, alignment with EU rules can also be witnessed in countries without such a perspective or ambition. The results also suggest that successful external agenda shaping is more likely if issues can be framed in multiple ways.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Moreover, a social dimension is developing, but is still in its infancy (see Bouzarovski and Petrova in Chap. 7).

  2. 2.

    The 19 participants are Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Slovenia, Slovakia, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. Latvia and Sweden were the latest EU members to become participants in September 2014.

  3. 3.

    Armenia, Georgia, Norway, Turkey are currently observers. Moldova and Ukraine became full members in 2010 and 2011 after being observers since 2006. Georgia is now a candidate for full membership, negotiating with the European Commission about its accession since February 2014.

  4. 4.

    These benefits can relate to the possibility to sell energy or energy products on the EU’s markets or to efficiency gains from opening up domestic markets for foreign competitors. The former scenario is arguably more likely for countries that make net sales in energy (or a certain types of energy) to the EU market (see Bradford 2012).

  5. 5.

    Padgett (2011, p. 1077) argues that the ECRB is more effective in prompting such processes than the fora.

  6. 6.

    The focus on formal adoption may thus underestimate the size (but not the success as defined here) of EU induced energy policy agendas because having an issue considered by policy makers is a necessary (but not sufficient) condition for policy adoptions whereas consideration by policy makers does not necessarily lead to policy adoption. Certainly, it is also possible that third states adopt national energy legislation conforming to EU rules in response to similar problems without taking account of the EU requirement. If this happens, the present study would overestimate the EU’s influence. However, in this context, it is important to note that the legal acts reviewed for this study usually make explicit reference to the EU requirement and can thus be traced back to the EU’s influence. All in all, it seems fair to say that the present study provides a rather conservative estimate of the EU’s external agenda influence.

  7. 7.

    In 2007, Regulation (EC) 1775/2005 on Conditions for Access to the Natural Gas Networks (repealed in 2009 by Regulation (EC) 715/2009) was added to the acquis by a Ministerial Council decision. The regulation lays down the details for the regulation of access to the natural gas transmission network.

  8. 8.

    Norway is excluded as it is the only Western EnC observer and has rather exceptional incentives to accept or reject EU energy policies.

  9. 9.

    Even though conditionality is likely to be a comprehensive factor for rule transfer, it is also possible that markets and networks supersede the dominant features of conditionality (Schimmelfennig and Sedelmeier 2004, p. 662). Identifying the independent and interactive effects of these mechanisms in EU external energy policy represents an important avenue for future research.

  10. 10.

    A protocol of the coding decisions and data sources for each country and policy is available from the author.

  11. 11.

    Certainly, meeting the targets for the use of biofuels should be subject to market rules, i.e. it should be possible for countries to meet their demand by importing biofuels and selling overproduction, which means that there is some market creation. But the setting of targets for renewable energy in fuels cannot be associated with the competition frame as such targets put a new constraint on fuel markets. Similarly, while fair competition among energy service providers should be ensured in the implementation of the energy efficiency directive, the setting of the target itself represents a market intervention. In fact, the regulation was justified by noting that the liberalisation of energy markets had led to efficiency gains and lower costs of energy generation, transformation and distribution, but largely failed to improve efficiency on the demand side (2006/32/EC: (9)).

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  1. Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences, University of Potsdam, August-Bebel-Str. 89, 14482, Potsdam, Germany

    Kai Schulze

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  1. Institute of Political Science, Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, Germany

    Jale Tosun

  2. Institute for Research Information and Quality Assurance (iFQ), Berlin, Germany

    Sophie Biesenbender

  3. Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences, University of Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany

    Kai Schulze

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Schulze, K. (2015). Exporting the Energy Acquis: The External Agenda Shaping Power of the EU. In: Tosun, J., Biesenbender, S., Schulze, K. (eds) Energy Policy Making in the EU. Lecture Notes in Energy, vol 28. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-6645-0_4

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