Leveraging the Network: The Case of Energy Regulators in the EU

This paper is an in-depth historical institutionalist analysis of the history and evolution of a regulatory network, the Council of European Energy Regulators (CEER), from its (informal) foundation in 1997 to the present day. The literature has interpreted the CEER as expedient in filling the gap between the policy directions the Member States agree at EU level and national implementation. This paper goes deeper and further than previous contributions by analysing the CEER from within and underscoring the importance of agency in its evolution. Data obtained through extensive elite interviews with former and current members of the CEER reveal an unprecedentedly multifaceted picture of this network: a flexible tool of informal governance that regulators have used for different purposes along the years, both collective and individual; a transmission belt between the regulators and energy market stakeholders, at domestic, supranational or international level; an institution, able to create a sense of identification in its members and to contribute to policy making. The paper argues for a revised understanding of transnational networks as informal governance arrangements: besides considering their coordinated policy implementation purpose, attention should be devoted to what use members make of them to achieve their own institutional goals. The CEER is also an empirical example of how technocratic European integration (in energy, at least) proceeded in practice: far from holding the reins of the process, the European Commission (EC) could “free-ride” on the regulators’ efforts to further its own Europeanization mission; at the same time, the regulators found at supranational level a space of manoeuvre, unthinkable otherwise, and a source of legitimacy that strengthened their position in the face of governments and industry.