Key Conclusions and Validity

Key Conclusions

At first glance, the EU seems to have influenced energy liberalization in all the case studies as all countries transposed and implemented EU electricity and gas market legislation sooner or later. Based on that, one could intuitively conclude that the EU was a driving force behind energy liberalization in all Member States. However, in effect the influence of the EU on shaping national energy market regulation was a more complex process than a first glance would suggest. A closer look at the reasons countries differed in the speed and scope of energy liberalization shows that compliance with EU energy market legislation was determined by political interest and expectations of Member States concerning energy liberalization, which in all cases was influenced by a country’s energy security situation.

If the EU as a regulator derives its legitimacy from the effect that the regulatory framework that it embodies and enforces entails for Member States, then political interests and expectations implicitly determine the political legitimacy of the EU’s energy market regulation. Interestingly, in some countries political legitimacy was based on the economic benefits that energy liberalization and a competitive market environment were expected to provide (chapter 9.1). In other countries political legitimacy was rooted in additional or different effects that were expected to result from complying with EU energy market regulation. The latter concerned the expected contribution that transposing and implementing

EU energy market legislation would have in fostering certain political interests, not least in the context of benefiting a Member State’s energy security situation.

In scientific terms, the EU’s influence seems to have been in most of the cases a necessary but insufficient factor explaining energy liberalization in Member States. It was a necessary factor as it was usually employed to overcome domestic political resistance (chapter 9.1). It was not a sufficient factor as additional factors determined the transposition and implementation of EU energy market legislation. Those factors were the existence or absence of economic and political justifications for energy liberalization as well as the energy security situation of a country (chapter 9.2).

Acknowledging the role that national interests and energy security concerns played in determining EU influence on energy liberalization is important. It indicates that EU energy market regulation may be subject to different national performance expectations. Besides benefiting from the establishment of a competitive market environment for electricity and gas, some countries, if not all, will most likely continue benchmarking EU regulation with regard to the effect on their energy security. This means if EU influence works at the detriment of national energy security, the political legitimacy of the EU’s energy market regulation will diminish.

In the context that energy market integration is driven by national interests, political legitimacy is very important, as it provides a key element for the effectiveness and certainty as well as stability of the EU’s regulatory architecture sustaining the internal energy market.

Any doubts regarding political legitimacy and, thus, certainty and stability may in the medium to long term lead to serious consequences—especially, in a competitive market environment.

A perceived unstable regulatory framework may reduce the planning horizon of market players and, thereby, distort energy investments and the performance of the internal energy market. In addition, doubts concerning the certainty and stability of the regulatory framework may, under certain circumstance, precipitate its collapse with far-reaching negative consequences for the countries participating in the internal energy market.

The investigation of EU influence on energy liberalization showed that although energy market integration is often framed as European Integration, the process seems to be less driven by a European Idea as the adoption of ELPs at first glance may suggest, but more by specific and sometimes different national interests.

Validity of the Main Research Outcomes

The role that national interest and energy security concerns play in determining the EU’s influence on energy liberalization and, eventually, the effectiveness of EU energy market regulation has to be treated carefully as a research outcome. The validity of those insights may be limited by the analytical framework employed in this study.

From a methodological point of view, the validity of the conclusions may be limited as they are based on a small number of case studies focused on a particular geographical region. It is possible that another selection of case studies would have provided a different picture concerning the role of national interests in determining the EU’s influence on energy liberalization. For example, old Member States with considerably large energy markets may have shown fewer differences in economic and political justifications for energy liberalization.⁶² Thereby, it may also be possible that energy security concerns would not have played a major role in determining the EU’s influence. However, the Baltic Sea Region was explicitly chosen for this study for the heterogeneity of the case studies. In that sense, the different case studies can be expected to have enhanced the validity of the research outcomes.

In effect, with including very different countries, this study answered one of the major critiques directed at the validity of research outcomes in Europeanization studies (chapter 3.5). The validity of the research insights also benefited from including electricity and gas liberalization in this study, which provided to some extent the basis for cross-validation of research insights.

A more serious theoretical and methodological issue for the validity of the research outcomes concerns the empirical basis of the cases studies. We have implicitly treated decision-making with regard to energy liberalization in Member States as a black box. We have analyzed each case of EU influence on energy liberalization guided by theoretical propositions (chapter 4.2), which drastically reduced the empirical reality and complexity in which EU influence took place to a few empirical factors that were expected to have played a key role in determining EU influence in a country. The relevance of those theoretical propositions in the context of the EU’s influence on energy liberalization can be criticized. However, the relevance is supported by the fact that the research outcomes basically confirmed the key factors determining energy liberalization identified in the existing literature on energy liberalization

62 Given the same source of political legitimacy for EU influence, under such circumstance, one may conclude the political stability of the EU’s energy market regulation to be more firmly grounded than the case in reality may be.

(chapter 2) and on which the theoretical propositions were based. This backs the validity of the research insights.