Towards A Wider EU-Governed Energy Space: The EU Energy Community, Its Role, and the Challenges Faced

Enlargement of EU internal energy market has become an important goal of the Union for decades. Established under the EU’s leadership by 2005, the Energy Community (EnC) has been envisaged as a great initiative in this enlargement with an expansion from the Balkans to the South Caucasus over time. Although its initial aim was to bring peace, stability and economic recovery to the Balkan region after the Yugoslav wars, it has then turned to a market integration initiative between the Balkans and the EU from there to far beyond. Having aimed to integrate electricity and gas markets of the South Eastern European (SEE) countries with the EU internal energy market initially, the EU over time has expanded its internal energy market through the EnC to Georgia in the South Caucasus and Ukraine and Moldova in the Eastern Europe, with the others on the agenda towards a larger European energy space. Being a legally binding initiative, market integration among the parties of the EnC does not cover only the physical interconnection of their power and gas networks but also the regulation of those markets with the EU rules. In other words, the EnC functions through the EU acquis. Those who signed the Treaty establishing the EnC, or those non-EU states of the SEE, Eastern Europe and the South Caucasus, must align with the EU acquis on electricity and gas besides the acquis on environment, climate change, energy efficiency, competition, infrastructure, etc., as the content of the EnC has expanded over time. Aimed first security, stability and economic wealth in the SEE region and then a greater market integration, as once did the European Coal and Steel Community in the 1950s, the EnC has been given a great importance in creating a larger European energy space regulated and governed by the EU. However, there is no any well-done study to say us that to what extent the EU has reached its goal through this initiative. Thereby, this paper aims first to explain the level of a market integration accomplished so far by the EnC, and second to touch the challenges or barriers faced by its members towards creating a larger EU energy space, especially when we think that they are the countries under many internal and external constraints be technical and geopolitical. And, the limitation this paper can face is about data access since it is difficult to reach official facts from those countries. Nevertheless, it is worth conducting such a research as it plays a crucial role in EU energy enlargement beside its external governance in energy and also in climate change overall while touching challenges faced by the EU wider energy space as aimed by the Panel I proposed - Market Integration Within and Beyond the EU: The Challenges the EU Wider Energy Space Faced.