European Communities – European Union

As mentioned in the very beginning of the present article, there is no "Common EU energy policy" yet. The energy policy was not even anchored independently legally in the The treaty establishing the European Economic Community/European Communities or the treaty establishing the European Union. The treaty establishing the European Economic Community only briefly mentions the energy industry in Article 3, and some more in Chapter XV, called “Trans-European Networks”. Apart from that, there were just partial regulatory mechanisms stipulated in the framework of other policies (e.g. environment, common market etc.). Still, the European Communities/European Union pay a great deal of attention to and significantly influences the energy sector. (For the first time in the primary law, the energy sector was anchored as late as in the ratified Lisbon Treaty – Head XXI. For more details, refer to the article on the Lisbon Treaty).  

As the energy sector was not included in the internal market, the development of which was to be completed in 1992, according to the 1985 White Paper on the Single Internal Market and to the Single European Act, there were not any liberalization proposals at that time. The European Commission presented the first of those only during the 1990s. At the intergovernmental conference between 1996 and 1997, the European Commission proposed to formulate a special energy policy chapter, but the member states did not accept the proposal.

In 1996 and 1998, the Electricity Directive and the Natural Gas Directive were adopted, respectively. Both were amended and changed in 2003 (Electricity Directive – 2003/54/EC, Natural Gas Directive – 2003/55/EC).