Redefining Boundaries to Escape Organizational Hypocrisy?

EU agencies are usually established in order to serve a functional need where it is politically acceptable for EU actors to delegate. However, the decision to set up a EU agency is not necessarily accompanied by instructions regarding its internal organization or external relations. In politics, ambiguity can be a way of handling diverging views. Thus, the new organization must make sense of its formal mandate and rules and find its place in its external environment. An organization might need time to become institutionalized or settle in relatively quickly. Organizational ecology theory claims that organizations need the support of their environments in order to survive. Ambiguity, layering and organizational hypocrisy are ways of navigating contradictory demands from one’s environment. The policy-area of energy sees a strong wish among member-states to retain control of this strategically important sector all the while expressing support to the creation of an internal energy market. The pattern of member states emphasizing national sovereignty over the sector has been observed at repeated Council and particularly European Council meetings. Nevertheless, in 2009 the EU decided to establish the “Agency for the Cooperation of Energy Regulators” (ACER) in order to help energy market integration in Europe. ACER received tasks related to implementing legislation under the umbrella of secondary EU legislation on the energy market. This meant that ACER would not engage primarily with EU’s legislative politics involving the European Parliament and Council, but instead be placed in the realm of executive-administrative politics, working on highly specialized topics. Moreover, this oriented ACER’s external relations mainly towards the Commission and the national energy agencies (rather than energy ministries). National energy agencies were to be coordinated by, and embedded within, the new agency – all the while member-states were to remain firmly in control over their national energy sector. However, the content and relations between national regulators and ACER staff in such ‘coordination’ was far from clear but had to be implemented by ACER. Crucially, the shape of the initial mandate was ambiguous as to the distinction between what was considered a purely national matter and what issues were cross-border – the latter entailing ACER involvement. While representatives from national agencies could become socialized within European networks, the latter represents a secondary structure and the former a primary structure. A secondary structure might not be strong enough to shift loyalties away from the national level. Instead of examining whether or not loyalties shift over time, this paper will examine how ACER staff and representatives of national regulators conceptualize the distinction between what is a cross-border issue and what is not, and whether this has changed over time due to formal procedures that sees national agencies deliberating with ACER staff – at the European level, and within the confines of an EU agency. Expanding the room for what is considered to have a significant cross-border relevance could facilitate enhancing the role that ACER can legitimately take on without overly challenging the idea of member-state control over the national energy sector.