Internal electricity market integration

Summary:

Building a fully integrated internal energy market started in 1996 and finalising the project has become even more urgent because of the energy and cost of living crisis currently facing EU citizens.

We assessed whether the Commission’s regulatory approach and the oversight by the EU Agency for the Co-operation of Energy Regulators (ACER) contributed to completing the integration and helping the EU’s internal electricity market to function properly.

Despite certain significant achievements were made over the last ten years, progress with integration was slow and uneven across market segments and regions within the EU. Seven years after the Council’s initial 2014 deadline, none of the binding regulatory guidelines have been fully implemented and various delays piled up, mainly due to the complex legal architecture and weaknesses in the EU‘s governance framework.

ACER is not empowered to ensure consistent enforcement of the rules at national level and its market surveillance is still incomplete, both leading to a limited number of penalties.

​We recommend that the Commission streamlines the regulatory and enforcement framework and strengthens ACER’s governance. ACER should enhance its surveillance activities and improve the transparency and accountability of its work.

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