FSR

In this launching episode of the ‘On The Right Track’ podcast series, dedicated to 2021 as the European Year of Rail, Juan Montero, Professor at the Transport Area of the Florence School of Regulation speaks with Elisabeth Werner, Director for Land Transport at the European Commission’s Directorate General for Mobility and Transport, about the main regulatory priorities on the EU railways agenda.

What were the motivating drivers behind the European Year of Rail, and what concrete EU initiatives can we expect in 2021? What measures should be pursued on the rail passenger front to increase the modal share of rail? Can the liberalisation of the EU railway passenger market contribute to advancing the European Green Deal objectives? What tools should be considered to improve the management of cross-border traffic and night train services? Is a breakthrough in policy necessary to boost the share of rail freight transport? What are the learning lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic as regards the resilience of rail transport and the importance of capacity management? Listen to the full conversation to find out more.

In this podcast with Christopher Bremme (Linklaters, Berlin) and Julia Sack (Linklaters, Berlin), we focus on the increasing role of foreign investment controls in the EU with the so-called Screening Regulation, which came into effect in October 2020, and the impact of these mechanisms on the energy sector, particularly as it relates to Germany.

This podcast focuses on the latest developments in Case C-594/18 P: Austria v European Commission, a long-running legal saga surrounding the development of a new nuclear power plant at Hinkley Point in the UK, which sheds light on EU state aid rules and the interaction between the Euratom Treaty and the TFEU. As the Euratom Treaty does not contain state aid rules, to what extent do the principles of the TFEU apply when it comes to determining the compatibility of state aid to the nuclear sector?

In 2014, the EC approved the UK’s plans to give state aid to support the construction of two EPR reactor units at Hinkley Point C, deeming it compatible with EU state aid guidelines, and thus the internal market. The basis of their approval was Art 107(3)(c) TFEU. The project, a joint venture between EDF and CGN, would be the first new nuclear power station in the UK in almost 20 years, and account for roughly 7% of the UK’s electricity supply. In the rare move of one MS challenging a state aid decision for another, Austria launched an appeal to this decision in 2015 on the basis that approval of the scheme contradicted the EU policy to support renewable energy. The case divided Member States. In July 2018, the GC dismissed the action on the basis that there was no need to establish an EU-wide objective of common interest for the project or, surprisingly, to establish that the aid is there to correct a market failure. Furthermore, it was found that the ET principles are separate from those of the TFEU/TEU, and thus the principles on the protection of the environment do not apply. Austria appealed the decision.

In a non-binding opinion of 7 May 2020, AG Gerard Hogan suggested EU judges should dismiss the appeal. He argued that Art 107(3)(c) TFEU does not predicate the compatibility of state aid upon it serving a ‘public’ or ‘common’ interest objective. Rather, compatibility need only be determined according to the potential of the aid to distort competition or trade. By accepting the objectives of the ET, all MS have “clearly signified their unqualified acceptance in principle of the right of other Member States to develop nuclear power plants in their own territories should they wish to do so.” He also noted that EU law (via Art 194 TFEU) has given each MS the right to determine its own energy mix. Ultimately, according to Hogan’s interpretation, compatibility cannot be used as an instrument to effect positive integration.

In the subsequent ruling of 22 Sept 2020, the Court dismissed Austria’s appeal and confirmed that the construction of the power plant may benefit from state aid, as originally approved by the EC pursuant to Art 107(3)(c) TFEU and in line with AG Hogan’s opinion. The Court confirmed that in the absence of specific state aid rules in the ET, the state aid rules of the TFEU are applicable to the nuclear energy sector. The Court concluded that the compatibility of aid is not dependent on the pursuit of a ‘common interest.’ The existence of a market failure may therefore be a factor in declaring aid compatible, but it is not a requisite for compatibility, according to the conditions laid out in Art 107(3)(c). Significantly, contrary to the GC’s findings, the new ruling held that state aid for an economic activity, which contravenes environmental rules, cannot be declared compatible with the internal market. The same is true for the provisions of secondary EU law on the environment. However, in the same ruling, the Court noted that the EC is required to take into account the negative effects of the state aid on competition and trade between MS only, and concludes that the GC in its earlier ruling was correct in the interpretation that the EC did not have to take into account the negatives effects of the measures on the environmental principles. How does this tally? What can be deducted from this split conclusion with respect to environmental protection principles?

This is a podcast about the replicability of the project LIFE DICET in other carbon markets. The project LIFE DICET is co-financed by the EU LIFE programme and managed by FSR Climate. It supports the EU and the Member States in international cooperation for possible integration of carbon markets with 5 other ETS regulators, namely China, California, Québec, New Zealand and Switzerland.

In the podcast, Albert Ferrari from FSR Climate converses with Professor Duan Maosheng, Director of the China Carbon Market Center of Tsinghua University, about the replicability of the project in China. Duan is extensively involved in the design and operation of China’s carbon markets and is actively contributing to the project LIFE DICET.

More info: https://lifedicetproject.eui.eu/

In this episode, Matthew Baldwin, Deputy Director-General, European Coordinator for Road Safety and Sustainable Mobility, DG MOVE, European Commission, joins Juan Montero, FSR Transport Part-time professor, to discuss Speed and Speed Management in Road Safety Policy. The discussion is a follow-up of the Executive Seminar with applied experts, researchers and stakeholders, which took place on the 8th of October.

Mr. Baldwin and Prof. Montero discuss a number of highly relevant issues: importance of speed and speed management in the Safe System, future steps to improve speed management at the EU and national level and what could the EU do in the future.

In this talk, the FSR Director, Jean-Michel Glachant introduces a framework of five key building blocks (technology; energy policy; energy professionals; energy consumers; the grid) to explain why he thinks that local distribution system operators (DSOs) are back at the core of the power system today, and why the future remains uncertain.

In this special episode of Net Zero, Leonardo Meeus, Professor at Florence School of Regulation and Vlerick Business School, and Georg Zachmann, Senior Fellow at Bruegel, share their thoughts on how legislation and policy are enabling the energy transition in Europe. The special episode also highlights insights from an FSR online interview with Directorate-General for Energy, Ditte Juul Jørgensen, in which she discussed Europe’s green recovery strategy from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Back in June 2019, the European Commission published the last energy package – the Clean Energy for all Europeans package – aimed at accelerating the energy transition and giving all Europeans access to secure, competitive and sustainable energy. After this new legislative package, in early 2020, Ursula Von der Leyen presented the European Green Deal, a policy manifesto aimed at making Europe climate neutral by 2050. In Georg Zachmann’s view there are three key building blocks to achieve this ambition – i) set a carbon pricing mechanism to all sectors; ii) ensure a just transition, compensating those who somehow are negatively impacted; and iii) finance the transition, transforming the EIB into a European Climate Bank. A few months later to the green deal announcement, European economies start suffering record downturns due to the COVID-19 pandemic. To support Europe's economic recovery, in May 2020, the European Commission launches the so-called “green recovery plan” putting climate action and energy at the centre of the agenda. Ditte Juul Jørgensen sees the European Green Deal as “a growth strategy in itself” and a “very useful foundation and starting point for the recovery that we are now engaging in”. The Directorate-General for Energy also points out three groups of energy policies driving this green recovery: i) buildings renovation; ii) scaling up renewables; and iii) system integration. In what concerns system integration and sector coupling, Leonardo de Meeus highlights the importance of “shedding some light on the grey areas of regulation”. While the path to climate neutrality and economic recovery in Europe seems challenging, particularly regarding public acceptance and equality across member states and income brackets of the population, Georg Zachmann refers to several studies proving “how easy it will be to have climate policies for significantly lower distributional effects”.

In this episode, Violeta Mihalache, Director of Urban Survey Timisoara, joins us for a discussion on the rationale behind- and challenges towards a common European framework for sustainable urban mobility indicators (SUMI). We discuss a number of topical issues on the urban mobility agenda: from sustainable urban mobility planning, to indicators and data gathering, funding and financing issues, and not the least, the interrelation between SUMI and the European Green Deal and Climate Law objectives.

In this episode, Marylin Bastin, Head of Aviation Sustainability at EUROCONTROL joins us for a discussion on the European Green Deal and its implications for the aviation sector. We discuss critical issues on the European aviation agenda, including barriers to route optimisation and how the implementation of the Single European Sky can support the reduction in aviation emissions. Furthermore, we touch upon the measures that airports can implement to mitigate both air- and noise-pollution stemming from airplanes and airport operations. Not least, we discuss the future of aviation in the post-Covid-19 period: Can climate-resilient growth be achieved? Could Covid-19 be transformed into an opportunity for a more sustainable and resilient European aviation?

In this episode, Sonya Twohig, Director of Operations at ENTSO-e, joins Net Zero host Joana Freitas to discuss if the ownership of grid operators influences the delivery of the energy transition. Recently, some questions have been raised on which entities should own the grids. For example, in the UK, the Labour party announced a plan to take National Grid into public ownership (if it were elected Government). On the other hand, the Dutch Finance Minister has said he plans to privatize or sell off a stake in TenneT, as the company needs more equity to invest in grid upgrades. In Sony Twohig’s view, grid operators can work in a very positive way regardless their shareholder structure, as, in the end of the day, “what is really important is that the operation and the management of that grid is controlled and regulated by the regulatory authority that supports that grid”. Another issue that has been recently under discussion is the entry of relatively two new categories of shareholders: Pension Funds and State companies from countries outside the European Union. Regarding potential security concerns, Sony Twohig notes that those concerns exist “regardless of whether you have investors coming from outside EU jurisdictions or not” as some threats come from within the domestic country and are not specifically related with the investors’ profile. In countries where the TSO is fully private, as UK and Portugal, the issue of segregating the System Operator function has also been raised. Currently, given the integration of a large amount of renewables, the system operator and the network operator need to work in a much more integrated way. However, Sony Twohig considers that such integration “doesn’t mean that they have to be on the same business structure” and highlights the key role of regulators “to ensure that we do all work towards that one single driver [integration of renewables”.