Intergovernmental and domestic factors in the negotiation process on renewable energy support schemes

Abstract

The adoption of the Directive 2009/28/EC on the promotion of the use of energy from renewable sources was an important step for the successive contribution to the global Climate Change Regime as well as the diversification of energy supply, thus ensuring energy security and reducing dependence on external suppliers. However, although the Directive sets out legally binding targets for each Member State by 2020 as well as interim targets, it does not provide any legally binding instruments, i.e., renewable energy support scheme(s), to achieve the above-mentioned objectives. Since the overall EU target as well as national targets are fairly ambitious, it poses a question, why the Directive does not include specific legally binding instrument(s) for achieving these targets, whereas the so-called flexibility mechanisms, provided in the Directive, are limited only to non-obligatory cooperation between Member States. It is important to mention that, during the negotiation process on the Directive, the harmonization of Member States’ renewable energy policies through the EU-level mechanism of Guarantees of Origin was widely debated. Therefore, the intergovernmental negotiation on the Directive’s provisions on renewable energy support scheme which should allow Member States to achieve their national targets as well as the overall EU target shall be submitted as the object of this article, while the purpose is to analyze the case of negotiating the EU-level renewable energy support scheme and to investigate the intergovernmental factors such as asymmetrical bargaining power of Member States as well as specific domestic factors’ influence for the negotiation’s results, applying liberal intergovernmentalist approach as the theoretical framework for analysis.[...]