Defining and Projecting EU Energy Policy

What is EU energy policy — and how successful is the EU in projecting it? Of course, posing questions about the nature of EU energy policy presumes that the EU has a collective energy policy. This has been a slowly emerging and contested area of EU competence — certainly in comparison with other sectors. The question of what EU energy policy is can be answered by pointing to the three ‘pillars’ that have historically constituted the objectives of EU energy policy: climate-change mitigation, energy supply security and establishing competitive, integrated markets (EC 2013a). EU energy policy might in this way be explained as the application of various strategies and instruments, and the establishment of institutions, in pursuit of these three objectives. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.