The coherence of EU energy policies and the role of legal research
This article is part of the FSR Law Blog, covering current legal developments impacting the sectors covered by the Florence School of Regulation.
This blog post focuses on the European Commission’s recent 10th State of the Energy Union report. It situates the report’s content within the broader challenge of balancing an increasingly complex policy agenda and highlights how legal research can help build coherence across these objectives.
Balancing objectives in the EU’s complex policy agenda
How to assemble the European Union’s complex policy agenda in the energy sector? This question appears evident in the European Commission’s recent 10th State of the Energy Union report. Aside from a stocktake of the EU’s progress on its energy policy objectives, the document can also be read as a reflection on the delicate balance between the Union’s energy policy priorities and the opportunities and limitations of legal action to achieve coherence between them.
In the relationship between the European Commission and the Member States, enforcement of existing obligations could be considered a blunt instrument to promote coherence of energy laws and policies, since it could incentivise the reorientation and alignment of national policies towards those areas subject to specific EU-level targets, such as renewable energy or energy efficiency. However, given that both of these targets are binding at the European level only, the European Commission is unable to directly enforce them through infringement and in the report limits itself to reminding Member States of the significant gap that still remains in the area of energy efficiency, where the EU collectively falls short of its 11.7% target and is currently on track to achieve only an 8.1% reduction by 2030, compared to a 2020 reference scenario. It should be noted, however, that the Commission has been willing to start infringement proceedings concerning the obligations where a failure to comply with Union law is more easily established. Examples of such proceedings include the referral of Poland to the Court of Justice of the European Union for failure to submit its final updated National Energy and Climate Plan (NECP) and Long-Term Strategy in the October 2025 Infringement Package and the opening of infringement proceedings against Estonia, Italy and Hungary in the November 2025 Infringement Package for failure to transpose Article 17(15) of the recast Energy Performance of Buildings Directive on the phase out of subsidies for stand-alone boilers powered by fossil fuels.
Seeking coherence of EU energy policies
Despite the challenges of balancing diverse policy objectives, the most recent Report on the State of the Energy Union also shows efforts to increase the coherence between policy objectives in ways that go beyond enforcement.
The Commission considers the governance process of the Energy Union, anchored in the Regulation on the Governance of the Energy Union and Climate Action, the key instrument to create the necessary coherence between policies. However, while the Regulation does mandate that Member States assess the ‘interactions between and consistency of existing and planned policies and measures included in [their NECPs] within one dimension and among different dimensions of the Energy Union’ (Article 9(2)(d); see also Article 8(2)(c)), such an assessment by Member States individually does not necessarily guarantee Union-level coherence of energy laws and policies. Indeed, even the assessment of interactions at Member States level is becoming more complex as the reporting obligations and instruments that are covered by the Regulation have expanded over the past six years. In this context, the Commission hints that a Governance Regulation revision, to be proposed in Q4 2026 and concluded by mid-2027 would not just incorporate the Grids and Citizens Energy packages but would also be complementary to, or indeed part of, the simplification efforts in order to ‘ensure the future energy and climate policy framework remains responsive and well targeted while ensuring ambitious climate and energy transition’.
After already having been declared a ‘reality’ in 2019, the fact that the completion of a ‘robust’ Energy Union has taken a more central role in recent key policy documents, such as in the Action Plan for Affordable Energy (which called for a ‘genuine’ Energy Union) may signal a stronger push to achieve coherence at EU level between energy policy strands.
The role of legal research in pursuing coherence of energy policies
In September 2025, the Florence School of Regulation hosted the inaugural Energy Law Research School, convening doctoral and postdoctoral researchers to discuss and peer-review their work and to exchange views on recent legal developments and methodology with expert faculty over the course of three days. Participants’ papers spanned a wide range of issues, including contributions on the Iberian blackout, energy data governance, and hydrogen infrastructure, as well as more fundamental considerations about the development and status of principles in EU energy law such as sustainability and ‘energy efficiency first’. This breadth of discussion enabled lively exchanges on the EU’s current energy priorities. A strong theme in the discussions between researchers and faculty concerned the balance that had been struck between the European Commission’s agenda on global competitiveness and strategic autonomy and its continued pursuit of its European Green Deal ambitions. Participants also questioned whether the current energy law acquis is fit to support these aims and to realise the potential synergies between them. Beyond these evaluative considerations, participants also discussed how legislation and legal scholarship can positively strengthen the coherence of the various streams of energy policy that have come to the fore in recent years.
The question of coherence, of course, goes beyond the Governance Regulation and NECP process highlighted in the report. After all, they are just some of the instruments that can be used to coordinate the mix of policies. It is here that legal research and fora such as the FSR’s recent Research School can be useful in discovering the precise points of consonance and dissonance in the interactions between components of the EU’s energy acquis, and between this body of law and other fields such as environmental and IT law, and in refining the methods to study and systematise these interactions. The fast-paced change of EU energy policy and the shifts between polices can challenge coherence, but must draw on exchange of deep expertise in the complexities of energy law. Here, legal research is crucial in building a holistic overview of policies to improve their mutual coordination and coherence.
Funded by the European Research Council (INTEL 101160605). Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or ERCEA. Neither the European Union nor the ERCEA can be held responsible for them. This work was also supported by the Research Council of Finland (361603).
