European Energy Policy

Energy-related problems affect millions of European citizens on a daily-basis. Climate change, rising energy prices affecting the competitiveness of European industries and the citizens’ pockets, energy poverty, or the EU’s energy security affected by the instability of its suppliers in the Middle East or by the use of energy as a foreign-policy tool by Putin’s Russia, are just a few of the reasons why energy policy ranks high on the policymaking agenda of the EU institutions and the member states.

This Research Network will examine the tensions and ambiguities affecting energy policy in the EU from a multi-disciplinary perspective. The overall idea behind the RN is to bring together scholars working on energy policy in the EU from different disciplines. Accordingly, the network will draw on the work of a number of already established study groups but will focus on a number of emerging and horizontal issues. These include:

• The complexity of the European energy policy given its cross-cutting nature. The relation and tension between the different goals of the European energy policy (competitiveness, environmental protection and fight against climate change, and energy security).
• The challenges for multi-level governance in the EU policy making and implementation considering the spectrum of public, private and third sector actors involved in these processes.
• The internal-external nexus of all the dimensions of EU energy policy, often requiring the coordination of internal policies with relevant external actors and an EU’s active role in the institutions of global energy governance.