Good Neighbourliness in a Sustainable European Internal Electricity Market: A Tale of Communities and Uncommunautaire Thinking

Abstract

The internal energy market is much like the ‘normal’ internal market so that the degree of completion is measured by economic interpenetration. This means that the more business is done across the border, the more the market has transformed from a national market to the internal market. This is coupled to a desire to come to a sustainable, i.e. more environmentally friendly and secure, energy production and supply. The objectives of market integration and sustainability lead to increasing interconnections between national energy systems and the corresponding need to take into account the effects of national policies on neighbouring countries. This contribution will examine how the principle of good neighbourliness can already be identified - albeit embryonically - in current EU sustainable energy policy. It also investigates whether and how this principle can form a useful framework to come to a sustainable European internal electricity market. It starts, however, by first identifying what this principle may entail with the use of similar concepts in small communities and how this may be contrasted when the communities become less relevant and neighbourliness is operationalised in a hierarchical setting.