Rapporteur Talks

Energy poverty continues to be a topic of discussion across Europe, as households navigate varying levels of access to adequate heating, cooling, and lighting. Recent indicators suggest some improvements, though many households continue to experience challenges linked to energy costs, income constraints, and the energy performance of buildings. In parallel, the concept of summer energy poverty has received growing attention, with interest in understanding how climate trends and heatwaves may influence living conditions and local planning considerations.

A range of EU initiatives provides a framework for examining these issues, including the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive, the Energy Efficiency Directive, the reform of the Electricity Market Design, and preparations for the Social Climate Fund, which is expected to support measures from 2026. Advisory platforms such as the Energy Poverty Advisory Hub offer tools and guidance to local and regional authorities assessing how to address energy poverty within their communities.

Housing affordability and availability have also become prominent discussion points in several Member States. The European Affordable Housing Plan sets out proposals intended to increase housing supply, support investment, simplify administrative procedures, and introduce measures for groups facing specific challenges in the housing market. The plan includes actions related to construction productivity, permitting processes, short-term rentals, market transparency, and housing support for young people. A European Housing Summit and a Housing Alliance are foreseen from 2026 to facilitate exchanges among policymakers and stakeholders.

Listen to this Euractiv Virtual Conference, supported by the LIFE project LOCATEE, to assess the EU’s evolving framework on energy poverty and housing, examining how existing legislative files and policy initiatives respond to current challenges, their strengths, and areas where further attention may be required.

Questions to be addressed include:

- How are EU policies and funding programmes currently being implemented in relation to energy poverty, and what feedback is emerging from institutions, stakeholders, and market actors?

- What considerations arise when applying legislation such as the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive, Energy Efficiency Directive, or Electricity Market Design reform, and how do these measures address identified needs?

- How are stakeholders assessing the European Affordable Housing Plan, and how are links being made between housing affordability, renovation requirements, and efforts to address energy poverty?

- How can local authorities, owners, housing entities, and social organisations cooperate effectively to identify and support households experiencing energy poverty, and how are policymakers and stakeholders considering summer energy poverty in relation to housing, planning, and renovation policies?

LOCATEE will address financial, regulatory, social and technical constraints in renovating private multi-apartment buildings while developing the capacity of local authorities to become intermediaries of the energy transition process - implemented in three pilot municipalities: Rumia (Poland), Torres Vedras (Portugal) and Piraeus (Greece).

Co-funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or CINEA. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.

On 1 January 2025, discussions on the next Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) for 2028–2034 moved into a more structured preparatory phase within the EU institutions. These talks come at a challenging moment for Europe, marked by geopolitical instability, weaker economic growth, and ongoing concerns about the EU’s competitiveness. The outcome of the negotiations will have a significant influence on the EU’s economic priorities over the next decade.

Through its “Spending Smarter: An Alternative Vision for the Next EU Budget” initiative, EPICENTER aims to contribute a critical and evidence-based perspective to the debate on EU spending and revenue raising. The initiative looks at how the EU budget can be used more effectively to support innovation, productivity, and economic resilience, while also considering the consequences of current proposals for taxpayers and Member States. It is based on cost-benefit analysis of key spending programmes and an assessment of proposed revenue measures and their economic effects.

While there is broad consensus on the need to strengthen Europe’s competitiveness and resilience, there are differing views on how the EU spending should contribute to these goals. In particular, questions remain about the balance between new investment, spending efficiency, and fiscal discipline. Some observers warn that expanding EU expenditure without clear priorities or performance criteria risks putting additional strain on public finances without tackling underlying structural problems.

Others argue that EU-level spending can add value, especially when it supports cross-border cooperation and investment, provided it is well targeted and focused on areas where EU action clearly makes sense and complements market-based solutions.

This Euractiv Hybrid Conference will discuss how the next Multiannual Financial Framework can be shaped to deliver a more focused, efficient, and future-oriented EU budget for 2028–2034, while strengthening competitiveness and maintaining fiscal responsibility.

Key questions include:

• How can the next MFF be designed to ensure EU spending has a clear and measurable economic impact?
• What principles should guide smarter EU spending, such as efficiency, subsidiarity, and performance-based approaches?
• How should policymakers assess the impact of MFF spending and revenue proposals on taxpayers and Member States?
• What are the best ways to raise the necessary revenues for the next MFF?
• What changes are needed to reduce overlap between programmes and better target EU funds?
• How can public spending, market-driven solutions, and regulatory reform work together to support innovation, investment, and long-term growth?

The EDF 2050 Net Zero scenario for Europe outlines the contours of a possible energy future. This new edition projects us into a Europe that firmly chooses competitiveness and sovereignty, while accelerating its path towards carbon neutrality. In a context where geopolitical tensions, energy costs and climate imperatives reshape priorities, EDF unveils an optimized pathway towards a continent that is more independent, more efficient and decarbonised by 2050. A pathway built on reducing final energy demand through large scale electrification of uses, and decarbonisation of energy supply with all low carbon energy sources.

The scenario highlights that climate neutrality is not only an environmental goal: it is also a major economic opportunity, enabling a lasting reduction of total energy costs, a significant decrease in fossil fuel imports, and value creation at the heart of European industries. Through new analyses, in depth projections and fresh insights into flexibility needs, electrification and the central role of nuclear power, this 2026 edition sheds light on the decisions that must be taken today to build a competitive, sovereign and low carbon Europe.

The EU’s increasing climate ambitions and upcoming revision of the Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) mark a critical phase for Europe’s energy sector. Achieving the EU’s 2040 climate target will require significant investments in power generation, networks, flexibility and district heating. Stable regulation and adequate financial support are essential to ensure security of supply, affordable energy prices for households and European industry, and a just transition.

This debate will address one of the EU’s most pressing challenges – restoring competitiveness. Reducing energy prices was a central topic at the European Council in March 2026, which highlighted the need for reforms that take into account the different situations across Member States. In this context, the EU ETS revision should reduce carbon price volatility and mitigate its impact on electricity prices and related costs. At the same time, growing competitiveness challenges have led many Member States and organisations to call for easing the ETS framework to reduce its negative impact on energy prices and industrial competitiveness.

On the anniversary of the Antwerp Declaration (11 February), European industry highlighted the increasingly challenging conditions, primarily due in their view to restrictive climate policies and the high costs associated with them. The importance of system stability and predictability has also been emphasised by Member States within the “Friends of Industry” initiative. Their statement adopted on 26 February stressed the need to limit excessive volatility in allowance prices and to maintain mechanisms supporting investments in low-emission technologies while safeguarding the competitiveness of European industry.

As the EU ETS strongly influences investment decisions in energy and district heating, improving market predictability and transparency is crucial. This includes limiting speculation, strengthening stabilisation mechanisms such as the MSR, and ensuring sufficient allowance supply for 2031–2040 and beyond, if needed. Integrating international carbon credits and addressing the issue of peaking electricity units' operating costs under the EU ETS are also important. Maintaining free allocation of ETS allowances after 2030 for district heating, serving around 70 million Europeans, is considered essential by some stakeholders.

Moreover, in many Member States, especially in Central and Eastern Europe, public support and access to EU funding will be essential to keep the decarbonisation of electricity and heating feasible and affordable for households and businesses. Therefore, there is a growing consensus that the Modernisation Fund must further facilitate the just transition of almost half of the EU's countries beyond 2030. These Member States argue that the size of the Fund should be increased to reflect the scale of investment needs for the broader energy transformation, including electricity networks, dispatchable generation capacity, system flexibility, and district heating modernisation.

With key policy decisions approaching, the ongoing discussions on the future of the EU ETS are particularly timely, as they will shape investment conditions, energy prices and the pace of the energy transition in the years ahead. Join this Euractiv Hybrid Conference to discuss how the EU can support a predictable and affordable transition in the energy sector as part of the upcoming revision of the EU ETS.

Listen to this podcast, which discusses the implementation of the Energy Efficiency First principle – the idea of ensuring that energy efficiency solutions are considered in planning, policy, and investment. 

Join us for the 3rd ENEFIRST+ podcast where we focus on the specific cases of Poland and Croatia - where Euractiv's Christoph Schwaiger speaks with Paweł Gilewski from KAPE in Poland and Vesna Bukarica from EIHP in Croatia.

In this Policy Triangle, supported by Sitra, we unpack how social media algorithms shape political debate and young people’s engagement with democracy.

The discussion explores the rise of opinion‑led and engaging political content, the spread of material that sits in regulatory grey areas, and young users’ negative experiences with politics online. It also looks at the growing role of engagement-driven content in shaping opinions, emotions and civic participation.

Experts from Sitra, the European Parliament and CONNECT International debate whether tools such as the Digital Services Act, algorithmic transparency and stronger oversight can help rebuild trust and improve the quality of online political debate.

Continue the conversation and check out Sitra’s latest report “Algorithms and democracy – How social media shapes young Europeans’ worldviews”.

The European Commission is committed to making EU legislation more efficient and easier to implement, aiming to reduce administrative burdens by 25% overall and 35% for SMEs. This agenda is central to the Commission’s efforts to strengthen competitiveness and deliver benefits for citizens and businesses.
To achieve these objectives, the Commission has already introduced a series of simplification initiatives in many areas, as well as 10 Omnibus Packages.

These include sustainable finance, investments, CAP simplification, small mid-caps, defence, chemicals, automotive, environment, digital, and food and feed safety.These initiatives aim to help EU businesses grow and boost their productivity and global competitiveness by making the business environment simpler, less costly, and more efficient.

In parallel, the Commission also aims to improve the practical implementation and enforcement of EU legislation to ensure rules are applied consistently and effectively across Member States.

However, some stakeholders warn that initiatives presented as simplification could drift into deregulation, meaning rules are weakened or removed rather than made clearer. At the same time, a key challenge of the simplification initiatives is to ensure that EU rules are clear, proportionate, and effectively applied across all Member States.

Listen to this Euractiv Hybrid Conference to discuss how simplification of the EU regulatory framework can drive its competitiveness and productivity. Questions to be addressed include:
• How can the EU enhance productivity and competitiveness through simplification ?
• How can digital tools be leveraged to simplify compliance and reporting?
• How can the EU ensure that simplification does not lead to deregulation?
• What changes and impact can businesses expect from the Commission’s simplification initiatives?
• What measures are needed to ensure effective and consistent implementation across Member States?

On 1 January 2025, the revised Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive (UWWTD) entered into force. Through this initiative, the European Commission aims to protect human health and improve water quality, and hence the environment, for all EU citizens.

One of the key innovations of the revised Directive is the introduction of an Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) scheme. Under the Directive, micropollutants must be removed through quaternary wastewater treatment, with the costs financed via EPR by the sectors considered responsible for the pollution caused by the use of their products. The European Commission has identified the pharmaceutical and cosmetics industries as the two sectors mainly responsible for the micropollution in wastewater.

There is broad support for the EU’s environmental objectives, but opinions diverge on how these goals should be achieved and on the practical implementation of the Directive. Fair burden-sharing remains a central concern, with responsibility currently focused on just two industries.

Concerns have been raised that the scheme risks imposing disproportionate financial burdens, potentially threatening the availability and affordability of essential medicines, for example, while other industries are not incentivised to become more sustainable. To be effective, the EPR framework should be built on robust scientific data, transparent methodologies, and a genuine application of the polluter-pays principle, reflecting actual contributions to pollution. Greater policy coherence is also seen as necessary to safeguard EU competitiveness.

Others underline that the scheme has the potential to unlock much-needed private investment in the water sector and accelerate the deployment of advanced treatment technologies.

Listen to this Euractiv Hybrid Conference to explore how the revised Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive and its EPR scheme can be implemented effectively, fairly, and sustainably, while balancing environmental ambition with industrial competitiveness and public health needs.

Questions to be addressed include:

- How can the EPR scheme be designed to ensure a fair and evidence-based application of the polluter-pays principle?
- What are the implications of the Directive on medicine availability, patient access, pharmaceutical innovation, and EU competitiveness?
- How can policymakers ensure balanced burden-sharing while securing the investments needed to achieve Europe’s water quality objectives?
- How can the UWWTD be implemented in a way that aligns environmental objectives with broader EU health, industrial, and innovation policies?
- How can all relevant stakeholders collaborate to deliver the UWWTD’s environmental objectives while ensuring access to medicines?

As Europe strives to position itself at the forefront of the global digital economy, data centres are emerging as the backbone of competitiveness and innovation, enabling digitalisation, artificial intelligence, cloud services, and the broader digital transition. This presents challenges due to rising energy consumption, which will need the development of large-scale renewable capacity to replace fossil fuels, alongside other substantial investments in grid infrastructure.

As part of these efforts, the European Commission is set to publish early 2026 its Strategic Roadmap for digitalisation and artificial intelligence in the energy sector which will aim at accelerating the deployment of digital tools (including AI technologies) across key decarbonisation sectors, such as power-grid optimisation, energy efficiency, and demand-side flexibility.

Panel 1: Powering the intelligence – How to integrate data centres in the EU energy system

Data centres are highly resource-intensive, consuming large amounts of electricity and requiring considerable grid hosting capacity. Europe faces the challenge of finding ways to balance the future backbone of the digital economy with its sustainability and decarbonisation goals.

The publication of the Heating and Cooling Strategy in the first quarter of 2026 will support the decarbonisation efforts in the sector by improving its efficiency and system integration.

In addition, the revision of the Energy Efficency Directive will promote a new rating scheme for data centres and foster their integration into the energy system.

This panel aims to explore both current and future solutions for the sustainable integration of data centres into the European energy system. Questions to be discussed include:

• What are the existing solutions to harness data centres’ energy intensive profile and make them fit for a decarbonising energy system?
• Data centres are expected to boom in many geographies around the continent. Is Europe ready to face this challenge?
•How can the new EU legislative framework underpin this process without jeopardising the climate goal?

Panel 2: AI – What’s in it for the energy sector?

Despite their energy intensive profiles, data centres and AI applications can substantially support the clean transition of the energy sector by boosting renewables efficiency, enhancing grid stability and fostering automatisation. The upcoming Strategic Roadmap for digitalisation and artificial intelligence in the energy sector will address such opportunities and the further arising challenges of AI integration in the energy sector.

This panel will explore how AI will integrate, benefit or challenge our energy systems. Questions to be discussed include:

• What AI applications are ready for deployment to support the clean transition of the energy sector?
• How can AI support Europe’s strategic autonomy in the energy sector?
• What role can AI play in reducing the energy cost of resource-intensive infrastructure like data centres themselves?

Financing energy infrastructure is emerging as a central issue in the next EU Multiannual Financial Framework, with the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) 2028–2034 set to play a key role. As the EU accelerates the electrification and decarbonisation of its entire economy, the CEF's effectiveness will depend on its ability to support not only cross-border interconnections, but also national and distribution-level electricity grids that underpin system integration, security of supply and economic competitiveness.

Some stakeholders argue that the future CEF will have to be carefully designed to reflect these rising investment needs in national electricity grids as a whole power system. This remains an important aspect to large-scale energy projects by enabling market integration, flexibility, and the reliable operation of interconnected and resilient power systems on every level. Their modernisation and development are therefore essential for the deployment of offshore wind, large-scale energy storage and other strategic energy assets that serve both national and EU-wide markets. At the same time, most of the smaller-scale renewable energy sources and energy storage facilities are connected to the distribution grid, enabling the development of prosumers and energy communities as well as further electrification of heating and transport sectors.

Stakeholders broadly agree on the importance of CEF, while highlighting the need for adequate and predictable funding, clear eligibility criteria and stronger recognition of electricity networks – particularly distribution grids – as critical infrastructure. Many claim that focusing exclusively on cross-border projects is insufficient, arguing that domestic grids, both transmission and distribution, should be acknowledged as integral to the functioning of the internal energy market.

Listen to this Euractiv Hybrid Conference to discuss the future role of CEF-Energy in boosting electrification and strengthening Europe’s electricity networks. Questions to be discussed include:

- What role should the Connecting Europe Facility play in financing electricity grids, including distribution networks and national infrastructure, alongside cross-border projects?
- What solutions can be proposed for the next CEF with the aim of delivering on time and efficiently all essential energy projects, taking into consideration the perspective of the fast-changing external environment?
- How can CEF better support large-scale strategic projects that rely on strong domestic grids while delivering cross-border benefits?
- How can CEF contribute to strengthening the physical and cyber security of critical energy infrastructure in the current geopolitical context?