IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/erp/euirsc/p0255.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Legal Feasibility of Schengen-like Agreements in European Energy Policy: The Cases of Nuclear Cooperation and Gas Security of Supply

Author

Listed:
  • Nicole Ahner
  • Jean-Michel Glachant and Adrien de Hauteclocque

Abstract

European energy policy is characterized by a complex allocation of authority between the European Union and its Member States which results in an intricate interplay of regulatory competence. Knowing the difficulties European countries face in coordinating and proposing common solutions in the area of energy, there is the urgent need to question the legal foundations underlying the decisionmaking process. Institutional paralysis, low reactivity to events and changes as well as systematic political horse-trading across all questions call for an alternative framework allowing some pioneering Member States to promote ad hoc common policies escaping the formal and procedural requirements of EU law. Our paper assesses the legal feasibility of short-run differentiation by means of partial international agreements inspired by the Schengen regime, namely entirely outside the EU framework. The key challenge from a legal point of view is to assess the substantive compatibility of such agreements in energy with the existing rules of the Union. Short run differentiation in energy cannot indeed be assessed at a high level of generalities. We therefore take two areas where legally-binding coordination at the sub-Union level is often called for: nuclear policy and gas security of supply. The possible substantive content of such cooperation is derived from the economic and political literature before legal feasibility is assessed. Our findings suggest that the scope for such agreements is limited for security of gas supply whereas it could be an improved cooperation device in certain areas of nuclear policy.

Suggested Citation

  • Nicole Ahner & Jean-Michel Glachant and Adrien de Hauteclocque, 2010. "Legal Feasibility of Schengen-like Agreements in European Energy Policy: The Cases of Nuclear Cooperation and Gas Security of Supply," EUI-RSCAS Working Papers 43, European University Institute (EUI), Robert Schuman Centre of Advanced Studies (RSCAS).
  • Handle: RePEc:erp:euirsc:p0255
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/1814/13976
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: http://cadmus.eui.eu/dspace/bitstream/1814/13976/1/RSCAS_2010_43.pdf
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Schengen;

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:erp:euirsc:p0255. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Valerio PAPPALARDO (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/rsiueit.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.