Agenda Dynamics on Energy Policy in the European Council

Thus, while the EU has many formal competencies on agriculture and (until the Lisbon Treaty of 2009) very limited powers on energy policy, such issues may be signalled at quite different levels of attention in the European Council. Since this institution is also a major venue for engineering European treaty changes, attention to problems can lead to expansion in competencies at a later stage (see Biesenbender in Chap. 2 for an assessment of the institutional and legal foundations of EU energy policy over time). This is what happened with European energy policy between the 1970s and the present. While the average proportion of European Council policy talk devoted to energy is rather modest, this hides large variation over time. For the size of the issue, variation in salience is quite large—from no attention at all to about one-third of the attention devoted to all problems within a single year.

In Fig. 3.1, we see that the appearance of energy problems on the European Council agenda follows a pattern of low key salience most of the time (the theme disappeared from the agenda twice in the 1980s) but interrupted by some peaks in attention, most visible in the 1970s and in the past decade. The spikes in 1975 and 1979–1980 relate to the first and second international oil crisis and signified a sense of urgency to resolve problems with oil supply in the future. Another energy-related crisis provoked a rather tiny surge in attention in 1986. The Chernobyl disaster was noted but at that time the accident’s location was still relatively distant from the territory of the Community. Notably in later years, this tragedy left a mark on the enlargement and neighbourhood policies of the EU. In 1999 the European Council promoted a broad partnership with Ukraine where a comprehensive energy sector reform was envisaged. Around the turn of the century some acceding member states had to comply with EU conditions for nuclear safety. A smaller-scale crisis which also emerged in the attention pattern was the disruption of Russian gas supply in late 2008–early 2009. While the EU had agreed on a comprehensive energy policy in preceding years, the disruption urged the government and state leaders to stress that security of energy supply remained a priority. Finally, an increase in attention occurred in 2011, part of which was triggered by the nuclear power plant disaster in Fukushima and another part related to matters of energy supply and sustainability.

Energy issues on the agenda of the European Council have also been aspects of more comprehensive policy initiatives in this domain, in which the Commission was involved since the 1990s with a series of white and green papers. One broader set of plans was the European Energy Charter, which was proposed in 1990 and signed in the end of 1991 by 51 signatories. It aimed at cooperation with other industrialised countries for securing energy supply. Eventually it resulted in the Energy Charter Treaty of 1994. Another significant example is the Energy Policy for Europe, which was initiated and discussed extensively in 2006–2007. It represented the EU’s attempt to reduce energy consumption, maintain security of supply and undertake a shift towards a sustainable and competitive energy use. The climate change debate which entered the political agenda also played a major part in preparing an expansion of EU energy policy competencies in the next European treaty signed in Lisbon in 2007 and enforced in December 2009 (see Ciambra and Solorio in Chap. 8 for an analysis of the British government in shaping the EU energy-climate agenda). The priority actions of this recent EU policy included internal market for gas and electricity, energy efficiency and renewable energies, energy technologies or research in sustainable energies, security of supply and a common approach to external energy policy. A review of the policy was carried out in 2011 and new actions were announced. In May 2013 these energy policy issues recurred on the agenda.³

Thus, it seems that attention to issues within the energy domain in the European Council has come mostly in two forms: reaction to focusing events and ‘high politics as usual’ regarding issues requiring strategic attention and broader plan development. This finding provides empirical support for the claim by Buchan (2010) that energy policy in the EU is driven by focusing events. However, it shows that detailed designing and routine monitoring of large policy plans can also act as an attention propeller in the European Council in this policy field.

We note at this point that the attention pattern as we analysed it from year to year hides even more variation from one European Council summit to the next. With an increased number of data points (there are some five or seven meetings per year in recent times), we see an even more erratic pattern of low attention and prominence over time. For example, the European Council meeting of 22 May 2013 was devoted largely to energy issues, which followed a number of meetings where these issues were barely addressed. Such focused summits by the European Council may indicate how this institution of high politics processes problems serially—very few at a time. When issues are addressed, they are meant to set the policy-making machinery elsewhere in the EU in motion and endorse initiatives politically. It is likely that years of rising attention to energy on the European Council agenda are followed shortly by policy output (see Biesenbender in Chap. 2).