The legal and political interrelations between national and EU energy policy competencies and the actual policies are multifaceted. In order to really understand those interrelations one has to analyse both the formal competencies of the EU as enshrined in the Treaty and the actual EU policies...

The EU is presently in a transition phase from environmental policy making by law towards other governance approaches based upon networking, voluntary commitments, benchmarking and other forms of soft law. Those new governance approaches often claim to lead to better regulation, while adopting a...