Europeanisation of national policy dialogues on energy pathways

The principal objective of the ENTRUST project is to develop an understanding of the “human factor” in the energy system in order to utilise derived knowledge to foster the transition towards a sustainable energy paradigm. To develop this understanding, it is necessary to assess the policy landscape that influences energy consumption, the progress of the energy transition, and the public discourse on, and engagement with the energy transition – this work forms the basis of Work Package 4. Within this WP, T4.2 entitled “Assessment of Europeanisation in national policy dialogue” operates on the premise that “Europe’s energy systems are deeply integrated” assesses the extent to which this is reflected in national policy dialogues.
Despite all the efforts to date to shape the European project including the energy dimension, complete integration of energy infrastructures and markets has not been achieved (Auverlot et al., 2014). In order to address the existing problems that result from this non-integration it is necessary to develop a meaningful, coherent, and comprehensive EU energy policy. Such an EU energy policy is vital to deal with global issues:

• Tackling climate change requires not only a shared commitment but also a common means;
• Building a coherent and comprehensive climate policy could strengthen the leading role of Europe in the international climate negotiations;
• Energy security issues must be considered in a comprehensive and inclusive manner on a EU-wide basis, rather than solely on the national scale, in order to tackle common problems and further protect European interests;
• Ensure the competitiveness of European companies;
• Inspire the European project which is losing momentum.

This deliverable, D4.2, analyses the development of such a European energy policy, the different Europeanisation processes influencing this development, and to what extent this EU vision is transcribed into the national policy dialogues.
The Europeanisation topic has been widely studied over the past two decades. While some authors describe Europeanisation as the emergence of exclusively European governance structures, the majority agree that Europeanisation describes a transfer process between the European institutions and the member States (MS). Integration of energy strategies, policy and legal systems (implementation of laws) plus the resulting effects on the energy system constitutes the concept of Europeanisation that supports this analysis. Thus, Europeanisation may be conceived as a dynamic process of policy transfer under the influence of several actors: European Commission, European Parliament, European Council, the MS and the lobbyists.
The methodology of this study was developed to analyse, respectively, the top-down, bottom-up, and horizontal Europeanisation that have been implemented in order to decrypt the strategies at stake in six EU countries – namely France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Spain and the UK. For each country, the analysis has involved: a review of policy making processes – the national contribution to EU policy making, the transposition of EU directives, and national policy making; a review of the evolution of the Policy and Legal System (PLS) over the period 2005-2016; and ascertaining to what extent the European energy vision is transferred to the national level.
Measuring the gap between the energy vision promoted by the European Commission and the reality of the existing energy system provides interesting insights that can facilitate the design of effective policy recommendations that serve the European project. Finally, the study of the horizontal Europeanisation is relevant insofar as it identifies the most interesting policies that, potentially, should be replicated.