European Public Affairs: EU’s single energy market: two sides of the coin

As already highlighted in a previous article dealing with the internal energy market in the EU, the European Commission has announced a list of 248 energy projects of common interests, which have been presented during the conference “Completing the Internal Energy Market: Building an Integrated European Energy Network”. We have previously discussed the various perspectives on energy security which can serve as a prism when analysing this particular issue.

Today, however, we will look into the advantages and disadvantages of such energy collaboration. For such a titanic task, we will confront the views from two of our contributors: Lesia, from Eastern Europe and Juan from Western Europe. We invite you to a debate involving current trends in the prospective EU internal energy market, presented through two conflicting viewpoints. 

According to the President of Lithuania, Dalia Grybauskaite, who spoke in the above conference; a fully integrated energy market would save tens of billions Euros a year in electricity costs. As she indicates, this would contribute to lowering consumer prices, hence it benefits the consumers. Worth mentioning here is the financing of the projects due to be executed between 2014-2020 with a general budget of 5.85 billion Euros. Provided Grybauskaite’s predictions will come true, today’s huge investments in the internal energy market of the EU will pay off European citizens quite quickly.

Moreover, a common internal energy market would enhance competitiveness and thus increase transparency across the sector. Again, with larger competitiveness, European citizens are those who benefit: the more diverse the supply, the lower the consumer prices.  MORE