Realising the European Energy Union, but how? Conflicting objectives and tradeoffs in EU energy policy

With Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the global climate emergency, a strengthening of the common energy policy of the European Union (EU) seems more urgent than ever. Already in 2015, EU institutions established the Energy Union with the objective to provide secure, competitive, and sustainable energy to businesses and consumers. The European Green Deal, announced in 2019, further increases these ambitions by setting the goal of reaching climate neutrality by 2050. To date, however, the Energy Union remains incomplete, with national measures dominating during energy shocks and member states risking falling short of their self-declared targets. This paper scrutinizes the reasons for the delay and the main obstacles to the realization of the Energy Union. To do so, it theorizes conflicting objectives and tradeoffs in European energy policy and assesses how they have played out over the past 50 years. We make use of a broad range of primary data including European Council conclusions, European Commission proposals, and national policy documents. The key challenge for policymakers located at different levels of government remains to solve the "energy trilemma" comprising supply security, economic competitiveness, and climate change mitigation.