In February 2016 the new European Commission under the leadership of Jean-Claude Juncker adopted an energy security package (European Commission 2016g) as part of the general strategy to create Energy Union. Two of the key elements of the new energy package are the revision of the gas security regulation as well as a revision of the decision 994/2012/EU that has established an information exchange mechanism with regard to intergovernmental agreements in energy. Additionally, the Commission intends to make substantial progress with the development of the Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) and gas storage. The envisioned reforms and the Energy Union idea represent some of the major changes in the European energy policy (Szulecki et al. 2016: 1752). Will the Commission be able to successfully coordinate European energy policies given that member states’ preferences, with currently (still) 28 member states, remain highly heterogeneous?
The contribution at hand might provide some insights into this question by tracing the Commission’s initiatives and activities over the period from 1980 to 2016 in the liberalisation of the EU gas market and the development of the trans-European infrastructure. The idea that the European Commission is a policy entrepreneur of European policymaking (Bauer 2002) and of European energy policies (Herweg 2015; Maltby 2013) is not new. Still, systematic analyses of Commission’s activities over a long period of time are rare (for exceptions see Boersma (2015), Goldthau and Sitter (2014), Proedrou (2012)). Additionally, we know from the previous literature that there was considerable variation in the success rate of the Commission’s efforts to create a coordinated gas policy. For example, the early 1990s were characterised by rather incremental regulatory activity (Matlary 1997), while more recent studies find faster and more substantial reforms (Boersma 2015; Glachant et al. 2013; Proedrou 2012; Tosun et al. 2015). One cannot, however, simply conclude that the substantial reforms in the gas sector are the dealings of the European Commission. It is essential to control for other possible explanatory factors (Schmidt 2000). Previous studies suggest that energy security concerns might be the driving factor for a deeper integration in the energy sector (Maltby 2013; Schubert et al. 2016). For this reason, different energy security environments are systematically compared in order to trace the difference in the Commission’s strategies. Based on historical developments (Chap. 2) and the conceptualisation of energy security demands as a reaction to internal and external vulnerabilities (Chap. 3), two periods form the backbone of the analysis. While in the period from 1980 to 2000 the demand for increased gas security was low (given low gas disruption threats and low oil prices), the period after 2000 is marked by high oil prices and Eastern enlargement, through which the European gas market became more susceptible to possible gas disruptions. If we do not account for these two different environments, we might arrive at wrong conclusions and assign too much importance to the Commission’s activities. Additionally, the seminal study by Pollack (1997) and the subsequent literature on the Commission’s formal and informal powers are used to structure the discussion of the Commission’s strategies.
An exploratory analysis of legislative activities in the liberalisation (Chap. 4) as well as in the infrastructure sector (Chap. 5) leads to interesting results. In both sectors one of the key contributors to successful policymaking was the usage of network governance. Intriguingly, when the Commission faces strong opposition, it tends to rely on its informal powers, rather than use its formal powers vested in competition law. This is in line with the theoretical work that suggests that the Commission seeks consensus in order to prevent “punishment” from the member states in the future, for example through a change in the Commission’s mandate or delegation of competencies away from the Commission (Pollack 1997). A strategy that works quite well to overcome a complete deadlock is to leave legislative ambiguity (a similar observation is made by Jegen and Mérand (2014)), while when there is a strong coalition of supporters, strict definitions and deadlines should be included if possible. The Commission also displayed its policy entrepreneurship skill by putting controversial matters on the agenda during the “windows of opportunity”, like the change in the government of the main opposing member state or crisis situations.
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