From energy consumers to energy citizens

The Citizens’ Energy Package names a shift that EU energy policy has been slow to make official: people are citizens in energy systems, not only consumers in markets.

The distinction is fundamental. Consumers have preferences. Citizens have standing. One navigates offers; the other participates in governance and can claim rights in systems they help sustain. When the Communication explicitly names farmers, renters, rural inhabitants and kindergartens alongside households, it acknowledges that people’s relationship to energy is shaped by how they live, not only by how they buy.

That acknowledgement opens the door to a different kind of policy question: not only whether markets are competitive, but whether they are designed for and with the people who depend on them.

The consumer protection dimension of the package reflects this logic, at least in part.

The 82% of consumers who say they would trust a supplier more if it adhered to a certified code of practice are not expressing brand preference. They are expressing the accumulated experience of a sector that has let them down.

The question is whether a voluntary code of service, whose reach depends entirely on national political will and business discretion, is the right instrument to close that gap. Trust in essential services is built through agency, empathy and accountability. A code addresses the surface of all three. It signals intent. But it does not change the underlying architecture. And the history of voluntary commitments in energy markets suggests that without consumer organisations in the room, not as consultees but as co-designers of the accountability mechanism, the gap between what the code says and what consumers experience tends to widen.

Gender and income make this concrete. Research now shows that poorly designed flexibility schemes can increase bills for sick or low-income households. The burden of adapting household energy use to market signals lands disproportionately on the people managing domestic life; while the policy conversation still tends to treat every household as a single, undifferentiated actor with the same capacity to respond. The package names gender and intersectionality. The instruments have not yet caught up with the language.

Implementation will be the real test. Tariff structures, support scheme eligibility, and national energy poverty strategies will determine whether citizenship in energy systems is a genuine offer or a well-intentioned framing. That is where consumer organisations, with their field evidence of where rights end and lived experience begins, will need to be more than invited observers.