EU wields stick and carrot to drive South-Eastern Europe energy integration

While previous attempts to integrate South-Eastern Europe’s electricity markets appeared to have stalled, they have been given a new dynamism amid a collective push for EU membership and a looming punitive CO2 duty. South-Eastern Europe—including Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia—has long sought to join the European Union, which the designated European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said is in “Europe’s strategic and security interests.”

But at the technical level, the process has been slow. For almost 20 years, the Vienna-based Energy Community secretariat has laboured to prepare the energy markets of countries like Montenegro and Albania for energy market integration.On 3 July, at the annual informal meeting hosted in Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Banja Luka, Brussels came to town to read the law to the gathered energy and environment ministers.

“The Contracting Parties are urged to accelerate the transposition and implementation of the Electricity Integration Package without further delays,” said the EU’s Deputy Director of DG ENER, Mechthild Wörsdörfer.

Source: ECEEE