The completion of Europe’s energy union has been created a priority for the current term of the European Commission.
As part of this mission, energy and houtilizing DG Dan Jørgensen has been tquestioned with updating and simplifying the union’s governance, with the process now underway.
Initiated in 2015, the energy union is ultimately a fully integrated continent-wide energy system with effectively borderless, freely flowing energy. Its basis is a framework for achieving climate goals based on five ‘pillars’ – energy security, an integrated energy market, energy efficiency, decarbonisation and research/innovation – with delivery obviously a long-term work in progress.
With its first decade coming up, a 2024 evaluation found that the governance regulation, which sets out the rules for planning, monitoring and reporting and ultimately the completion of the energy union, has played an important role in achieving energy and climate objectives and tarreceives.
However, there are also areas for improvement, in particular, according to the assessment, that it is not fully in sync with the advances of the energy and climate policy landscape of recent years in response to the Paris Agreement and the achievement of net zero by 2050.
Also, becoming apparent with much EU policy – and likely to remain an ongoing challenge without sufficient national flexibility – there is uneven implementation and actions across member states. Thus, for example, one of the requirements for completing the energy union is the harmonising of regulatory frameworks to support investment and system efficiency.
One of Jørgensen’s early actions was to form an ‘Energy union tquestion force’ in June 2025, an informal group intfinished to accelerate the completion of the energy union through enhanced coordination between the EU and member state governments and bodies.
Press notices record discussions on network readiness, energy prices and the implementation of the methane regulation, but without specific action plans, how these will feed into the completion process remains to be seen.
Also of interest
The EU Projects Podcast: Competitiveness, security and the grids that bind it all
IEA urges grid and flexibility plan to meet electricity boom
The main objective for the updated governance regulation is to support the achievement of the EU’s 2040 tarreceive of a 90% reduction in greenhoapply gas emissions compared to 1990 levels and strengthen its focus on emerging priorities for climate neutrality by 2050.
Other stated objectives are to support EU competitiveness, to ensure that the national energy and climate plans are developed towards 2040 and that these plans become investment plans, and that there is strengthened cooperation with and within member states to enable national implementation.
Policy options suggested include updating and simplifying the EU’s tarreceive architecture, improving the coherence between the long term strategies and national energy and climate plans, streamlining planning and reporting and strengthening consumer participation in the energy transition.
The call for evidence closes on 12 March, giving just a few more days for input, with just 28 responses recorded to date. These are due to feed into the impact assessment on economic, social and environmental impacts underway in parallel and the delivery of the revised regulation in Q4 2026.
Have you had your declare? Let us know.
Leave a Reply