Governance through real-time compliance: the supranationalisation of European external energy policy

ABSTRACT

Member States have retained core competences in external energy policy since the beginning of European integration. Even the new ‘energy chapter’ in the Lisbon Treaty safeguards national prerogatives. Contrasting this trend, we show that throughout the past decade this national stronghold has been eroding and replaced by supranational oversight. Reviewing energy-related negotiations of Poland and Lithuania with Russia and new regulation on intergovernmental agreements, we demonstrate how the Commission gained control over Member States’ external energy relations. We explain the expansion of supranational authority with spillover pressures equipping the Commission with new procedural prerogatives. Central to this development was the institutionalisation a novel supranational instrument we call ‘real-time compliance’. The term denotes the prompt application of soft and coercive means, ensuring compliance of energy agreements between the Member States and third countries with EU rules. This expansion of supranational powers through procedural competences has implications for debates on European energy policy and European integration.

KEYWORDS:

• Energy policy
• European Commission
• European integration
• external governance
• intergovernmental agreements
• Russia

Acknowledgements

The authors particularly express their gratitude to Tina Freyburg, Andreas Goldthau, Marie-Pierre Granger, Benjamin Hofmann, Daniel Izsak, Dirk Lehmkuhl, Anna-Alexandra Marhold and Joshua Posaner as well as two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on draft versions of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Philipp Thaler is an Assistant Professor for Energy Governance at the Institute of Political Science of the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland.

Vija Pakalkaite is an analyst for power and the EU emissions trading system at ICIS in Karlsruhe, Germany.

Notes

1 Interview C.

2 Directive 2009/73/EC.

3 Interview A, C, F.

4 Interview D.

5 ibid.

6 Interview B, C, F.

7 Interview C, D.

8 Interview C.

9 Directive 2003/55/EC.

10 Interview Q.

11 Interview O.

12 Interview E, G, K, M, N, O.

13 Interview N.

14 Interview D, Q.

15 Interview D.

16 Interview Q.

17 Interview J.

18 Interview D.

19 Interview K.

20 Interview D.

21 Interview M.

22 Interview A, B, C, D, G, H, I, N, P.

23 Interview H.

24 Interview C, P.

25 Regulation (EU) No 994/2010.

26 Interview E.

27 Interview E, L.

28 Interview C, L.

29 Interview L.

30 Decision (EU) 2017/684.

31 Council Regulation (EC) No 139/2004 and (EU) 2015/1589.

32 Interview C, D, G, N.

Additional information

Funding

This research project is part of the activities of SCCER CREST (Swiss Competence Center for Energy Research), which is financially supported by Innosuisse - Schweizerische Agentur für Innovationsförderung [grant number KTI 1155000154]. An earlier version of this article was presented at the 2019 workshop on the EU’s climate and energy policy organised by Working Group 2 of the COST Action CA17119.