EU Common Energy Policy

Nowadays, the energy issue has become a focus of concern in the world. For Europe, most of the member states of the European Union (EU) are short of energy, so energy has always been a major factor which restricts their economic development. During the 20^th century, the consumption structure of Europe experienced several transitions from the coal to oil, then to the consumption structure including coal, oil, gas, nuclear energy and renewable energy. The term of energy in my thesis refers to the energy of coal, oil, gas, nuclear energy and renewable energy which account for an important position in current EU consumption structure. European Union has formed a series of systematic policy areas in its development process and the EU policies involve a wide range including level of the super-national energy policies and the national policies of the member states. This thesis refers in particular to the super-national level energy policies.European integration started in the energy sector and at the beginning of the Europe integration, people had great expectations for the formation of EU Common Energy Policy. However, compared with the Common Agricultural Policy, EU Common Energy Policy did not take shape until March 2006 after more than half a century's tortuous development with the publication of 'the EU Green Paper on Energy Policy' as a mark. The formation of EU Common Energy Policy has gone through from a single field of coal and nuclear energy to a comprehensive energy policy which includes oil, electricity, and renewable energy and the energy objective has appeared to transit from negatively preventing the disruption of the energy supply to actively developing alternative energy and then to integrating the security of energy supply, environmental protection and internal energy market agenda of the comprehensive energy policy changes.The formation of EU common energy policy undoubtedly suggested that the cooperation of EU member states in the field of energy has been further strengthened, and the authority of supra-national level has also improved. Then what are the driving forces and the impedient factors of the formation of EU Common Energy Policy? The analysis and replies to these questions help strengthened our understanding and ability to judge the future development trend of the history and current state of the EU Common Energy Policy. At present the analysis of EU energy policy in the academic field basically stays in the introductory and description level and there are limited analyses from the theoretical level. This paper seeks to review the EU Common Energy Policy formation process through theoretical analysis. This dissertation selects the theory of Neofunctionalism and uses the core concept of the theory-spillover as the analytical tool. The theory of Neounctionalism has ever made a reasonable explanation of the driving forces of the Europe Integration, thus with regarding to formation process of the EU common energy policy specifically, is the Neofunctionalism still explained in the EU common energy policy? Can the formation process be seen as a spillover process?Neofuntinalism theory is the most well-known in the theories of integration. Neofuntinalism experienced a historical evolvement from the rising and developing stage of the theory to the theoretical reflection stage and then to theoretical integrated phase. In the theory of Neofuntinalism, the term of spillover is a core concept which performs the most functions of explaining changes of Neofuntinalism. According to the special nature of the driving force emphasized by the integration process, the expanded explained spillover can be divided into three types, namely, functional spillover, induced spillover and cultivated spillover and they stress the driving factors in the process of integration from different respective. In this dissertation, the three above-mentioned types of spillover will be summed up as a compound model of spillover, which is used as a theoretical analysis framework of the dissertation. On this basis, this thesis analyzed specifically the driving forces and the impedient factors in the formation course of EU Common Energy Policy of different historical periods.I believe that the EU Common Energy Policy formation process, as a whole, can be seen as a spillover process, and only in different historical periods, it reflects different forms of spillover. In particular, in the development from the European Coal and Steel Community to the European Atomic Energy Community, the main forms of spillover were functional spillover, and cultivated spillover; in the development from the European Atomic Energy Community to the common policy in the oil area, the induced spillover and functional spillover were the main forms; and in the development of the common policy in the oil area to the comprehensive energy policy involving renewable energy, the spillover form was reflected in the form of joint force of the functional spillover, the induced spillover and the cultivated spillover in which the cultivated spillover played the most prominent role.Thus, compound spillover model of Neofunctionalism has been, to a certain extent, been testified in the formation process of the EU Common Energy Policy and this also means that, after the expansion and improvement of theory, Neofunctionalism has some explanatory power to the formation of the EU Common Energy Policy. But at the same time, it should be noted that the EU common energy policy is not confined to the driving forces in the framework of Neofunctinalism, but depends on more influencing factors, such as the difference in the national strategy and the interests among member states, the impact of national pressure, etc. When we analyze the formation process of the EU Common Energy Policy, we should see the integration as a dialectical process rather than only concern the driving forces of integration. That is to say, it is necessary to consider not only the driving forces but also the impedient factors in the formation course of common energy policy.Since the "Treaty of Rome" was signed in 1957, the EU has gone through more than 50 years of development. Today, EU continues to move forward by widening and deepening the function of the two wheels. Along with the deepening and expanding of European integration, an integrated energy policy including supply security, environmental protection and competitiveness will be further developed and the EU Common Energy Policy will be further implemented in practice through a series of action plans. But at the same time we should also understand that, the future development of the EU Common Energy Policy is increasingly closing to the fundamental level of a sovereign state and thus it is facing greater spillover resistance. But meanwhile, the autonomy of the European Union has also been greatly enhanced, so spillover phenomenon will be weakened, however it does not mean that the European integration would be weakened.