EU Marching Towards Creation of Energy Union

The European Commission has set out its strategy to achieve a resilient Energy Union with a forward-looking climate change policy.

“It is time to complete the single energy market in Europe,” the EU Commission states in its press release.

The College of Commissioners approved the strategy for Energy Union, which comprises the following package:

• A Framework Strategy for a Resilient Energy Union with a Forward-Looking Climate Change Policy. This sets out, in five interrelated policy dimensions, the goals of an energy union – and the detailed steps the Juncker Commission will take to achieve it, including new legislation to redesign and overhaul the electricity market, ensuring more transparency in gas contracts, substantially developing regional cooperation as an important step towards an integrated market, with a stronger regulated framework, new legislation to ensure the supply for electricity and gas, increased EU funding for energy efficiency or a new renewables energy package, focusing European R&I energy strategy, reporting annually on the ‘State of the Energy Union’, just to name a few.

• An Interconnection Communication, setting out the measures needed to achieve the target of 10% electricity interconnection by 2020, which is the minimum necessary for the electricity to flow and be traded between Member States. It shows which Member States currently meet the target – and which projects are necessary to close the gap by 2020.

• A Communication setting out a vision for a global climate agreement in Paris in December. The vision is for a transparent, dynamic and legally binding global agreement with fair and ambitious commitments from all parties. The Communication also translates the decisions taken at the European Summit in October 2014 into the EU’s proposed emissions reduction target (the so-called Intended Nationally Determined Contribution, or INDC) for the new agreement.

The College also received today Their Majesties the King and the Queen of the Belgians and held its first orientation debate on the “Economic Governance Package”.

Image: EU Commission