The European Energy Union: A Chance for France

Among the new borders of European integration, there is one that is making progress: the European Energy Union, incomplete and imperfect, granted, but real and beneficial. In this tribune, Yves Bertoncini, Director of the Jacques Delors Institute, and Thomas Pellerin-Carlin, Research fellow at the Jacques Delors Institute, analyse the achievements of the European Energy Union, that aims to ensure the energy security of Europe, to fight climate change and to keep energy affordable by creating a real common energy policy.

The European Energy Union has already seen some striking and too little known achievements:
• the reduction of European greenhouse gas emissions, that protects the French from catastrophic climate change;
• the amelioration of energy efficiency, that makes us more independent;
• the goal of 20% of renewable energy in the Europan energy mix within reach, that creates hundreds of thousand of jobs.

If the new President of the French Republic wants to protect the French people against energy insecurity, air pollution, climate change or the announced failure of the energy system inherited from the choices of the 1960s, he or she should engage in an ambitious European Energy Union. In the energy sector as in others, true French patriotism consists in engaging France in Europe.

• Primary Source

ESO: Key source: Energy Union http://www.europeansources.info/record/energy-union/

ESO: Background information: Energy Policies of IEA Countries - France 2016 Review http://www.europeansources.info/record/energy-policies-of-iea-countries-france-2016-review/

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