Energy Governance in the European Union: Enabling Conditions for a Low Carbon Transition?: Måns Nilsson

Although energy has a long and substantial governance history in the European Union (EU), dating back to initial discussions in the 1950s about including energy in the Treaty of Rome (see Chapter 2, this volume), for a long time it did not function formally as a European policy issue in the same way as, for example, agriculture, competition or the environment. Still, as a result of both member state and EU-institutional eff orts, today the EU is widely considered among the leading jurisdictions in the world when it comes to various facets of energy governance, including energy market integration and the promotion of renewable sources of energy. In particular since the mid-2000s, energy has evolved into an EU political priority, mainly driven by climate change and security of supply agendas, and today it is routinely addressed as a European Community concern that as such is also integrated in the Lisbon Treaty.