In person icon Market Integration Within and Beyond the EU: The Challenges the EU Wider Energy Space Faced

Abstract

The EU has aimed to have a fully integrated energy market within the EU while extending it beyond the borders as much as it can. Playing a crucial role in competition, an important and forerunning leg of EU common energy policy, market integration has become a very significant EU goal since the 1980s when it launched to develop an internal energy market (IEM) at the Union level. As such, not only interconnections of electricity grids and gas networks but also alignment with the EU common rules set for the IEM, that is, EU electricity and gas directives and regulations, has become necessary for the EU member states but also for non-EU states in its neighbourhood and far beyond whose electricity and gas markets have been intended for a larger EU regulatory space, e.g., those in the Balkan region, Eastern Europe, South Caucasus and the Mediterranean. However, the EU has not yet achieved a full market integration at home neither at the regions of its expansion. Facing internal and external challenges the EU member states have failed to create a well-connected and more competitive internal energy market so far whereas the envisaged regions for a larger EU integrated and regulated space have remained behind. Thereby, this Panel aims to explain market integration barriers the EU larger energy space faced, beside, if exists, the presence of opportunities or tools to overcome them. As such, papers which touch internal and external challenges faced by member states and by those envisaged for an EU larger energy space, e.g., capacity deficiency, cost of integration, geopolitical constraints, etc., and also those which offer some solutions or remedies to the existing problems, e.g., lack of interconnections between/among member states and between them and their non-EU neighbours and lack of alignment with the EU IEM acquis, are welcome. And, by explaining problems and challenges behind, this Panel also will help us to measure the exact level of market integration the larger EU energy space achieved so far, while predict the time the EU needs for a fully functioning wider European energy market thus creation of a more competitive, secure and sustainable energy policy within and beyond the EU as all are the interlinked objectives for which a high-level market integration is needed.

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