Governance of the Energy Union
Proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on the Governance of the Energy Union was part of the Winter Energy Package announced by the European Commission in November 2016.
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28 March 2023
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The said legislative initiative has been adopted by the European Parliament and of the Council on 11 December 2018 as the Regulation (EU) 2018/1999 on the Governance of the Energy Union and Climate Action. On 21 December 2018 the Regulation has been published in the Official Journal of the European Union.
The aims of this legislative piece are to simplify the process of monitoring and to address weaknesses in implementing the goals of Energy Union, in particular the 2030 EU targets on renewables, energy efficiency and greenhouse gas emissions (it integrates 31 planning, reporting and monitoring obligations, and deletes a further 23 obligations). According to the Regulation, national energy and climate plans (NECPs) are to be prepared for the 2021-2030 period, followed by progress reports. Both plans and reports must use binding templates, and gain early input from the European Commission.
Links The Regulation envisages national and EU registries and inventories on greenhouse gas emissions for the post-2020 period as a means to assess progress in meeting the goals of the Paris Climate Change Agreement. The Regulation obliges each EU Member State to produce an integrated national plan for energy and climate by 1 January 2019, covering the 2021-2030 period. A binding template is provided in the annex to the Regulation.
The Regulation is directly applicable in all EU Member States, thereby ensuring comparability in their national energy and climate plans and reports.
Before the adoption of the said Regulation, the planning, reporting and monitoring obligations of the EU energy and climate acquis were dispersed across a wide range of legislation, approved at diferent times in order to meet various objectives. Each item of legislation had its own set of such obligations and separate reporting requirements existed for all key legislation under the energy and climate acquis.
The main steps in the legislative procedure covered, in particular:
1. the Joint Report of the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety (ENVI) and Committee on Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE) adopted on 11 January 2018 (A8-0402/2017), which proposed to increase the frequency of the integrated plans, to oblige these to include provisions on energy poverty, to plan for a longer-term perspective (until 2050), and facilitate regional cooperation on RES infrastructure; and
2. Provisional Agreement Resulting from Interinstitutional Negotiations of 29 June 2018, which, inter alia:
- established an e-platform for reporting of national plans and associated data, and requires this to be operational by 1 January 2020,
- introduced an additional obligation on Member States to prepare long-term climate and energy strategies with a 30-year perspective, which would focus on meeting the goals of the UNFCCC Paris Climate Change Agreement,
- obliged the European Commission to draft a strategic plan for methane and to establish an EU-level renewable-energy financing mechanism.