Making TEN-E into a truly European project

The report prepared by Mr Draghi, former President of the European Central Bank and former Prime Minister of Italy, to the European Commission entitled “EU competitiveness: Looking ahead” (“the Draghi report”) draws attention to different aspects of European competitiveness. In particular, the Draghi report identifies as public goods e.g. defence procurement or cross border grids that will be undersupplied without common action and possibly also common funding. Furthermore, the report underlines the role of energy grids as a critical component when marrying decarbonisation with competitiveness. The Draghi report calls for a collective focus on grids through a new approach to planning, in particular as relates to too slow and diverging permitting processes, lack of sufficient funding at EU level to common objectives, and proposes to establish a 28th regime and permanent European Coordinator for permitting. In addition, the report calls for more EU level planning and better coordination of National Development Plans. In parallel, the EU should develop the governance needed for decisions and market functions of cross-border relevance to be taken centrally under the revived Energy Union. The Draghi report rightly emphasises the key role of grids in delivering EU’s decarbonisation objectives and improving competitiveness of EU industry. It also underlines the too small size of the Connecting Europe Facility in comparison to the investment needs in cross-border grids. At the same time, the report keeps silent on the EU’s policy framework for grids which, however, provides a number of elements that can address many of the problems and proposals raised in the report already today. This Policy Brief starts by presenting the EU’s policy framework for energy grids, compares the elements therein to those proposed in the Draghi report and concludes by summarising the proposed improvements to the EU policy framework and raises a number of questions where more information or research would be useful to inform policy development.