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Vooren, Bart van --- "EU External Energy Policy: The Legal and Policy Impact of the New Competence" [2012] ELECD 525; in Trybus, Martin; Rubini, Luca (eds), "The Treaty of Lisbon and the Future of European Law and Policy" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2012)

Book Title: The Treaty of Lisbon and the Future of European Law and Policy

Editor(s): Trybus, Martin; Rubini, Luca

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9780857932556

Section: Chapter 15

Section Title: EU External Energy Policy: The Legal and Policy Impact of the New Competence

Author(s): Vooren, Bart van

Number of pages: 20

Extract:

15. EU external energy policy:
the legal and policy impact of the
new competence
Bart van Vooren

1. INTRODUCTION

Is a common external energy policy for the Union a desirable Utopia, the
beginning of a trend, or rather a mature part of EU external relations?
Developments towards the EU internal energy market have been ongoing
for quite a few years, though an EU external energy policy did not follow
suit, and did not attain political prominence until around 2005. Since then,
an avalanche of policy documents and initiatives have emerged aiming to
formulate an EU external policy. These efforts and policy rhetoric notwith-
standing, disputes over the North Stream, South Stream and Nabucco
pipelines,1 and Member States' individual deals with Russia/Gazprom have
been illustrative of the EU's inability to project a single external voice in the
sphere of energy policy.
In December 2009 the Lisbon Treaty explicitly conferred powers in the
sphere of energy (Article 194 TFEU). While that article does not explicitly
refer to its external dimension, the goal of this chapter is to explore what ­
if any ­ impact the new legal basis of the Lisbon Treaty may have on the
formulation and instruments to execute EU (external) energy policy.
In this chapter I first set out the state of play on EU energy policy,
outlining the three pillars on which it is based and as they developed since
2005: security of supply, within a competitive market, while ensuring its
environmental sustainability. This then forms the ...