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Leveraging funding for energy efficiency in buildings in South East Europe

Author(s): Jorge Núñez Ferrer / Language(s): English

This paper addresses the possibility of creating financial instruments so that large scale energy efficiency renovation programmes can be substantially financed by the private sector. Aimed at decision-makers and those wishing to understand the issue, it avoids excessive technicalities. The paper presents some selected examples of financial instruments for energy efficiency that could represent possible blue prints for South East Europe. It concludes by proposing to develop variations of one of the simplest models to avoid ambitious, complex but ineffective instruments. A clear warning is given on the need for a careful ex-ante assessment of the legal framework, other barriers and the capacity of building associations to request loans on behalf of the owners. It also insists that business strategy development requires special attention.

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Scenarios for a Wider Europe

Author(s): Michael Emerson / Language(s): English

This paper makes the case for enhancing the economic and political integration of the entire wider European space with the EU, involving all those neighbouring states willing to subscribe to EU standards while at the same time facilitating the EU’s further enlargement in due course. This would also amount to a consolidation of Europe’s values, and act as a strategic marker to rebut Russia’s efforts to undermine those values. More specifically, the author advocates: - Upgrading the EU’s Association Agreements (AA) with East European states (Georgia, Moldova, Ukraine), with further content branded ‘AA+’; - Replacing the European Neighbourhood Policy with a Wider Europe policy concept; - Continuing the development of a multi-speed Europe which, with other EU reforms, could facilitate further enlargement of the EU when the conditions are met.

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Sinking to Zero: the role of carbon capture and negative emissions in EU climate policy

Author(s): Milan Elkerbout,Julie Bryhn / Language(s): English

The updated EU long-term climate strategy with its net-zero emissions objective and the IPCC’s Special Report on the 1.5°C target prompt a renewed strategic look at negative emissions and carbon capture. Reaching net-zero greenhouse gas emissions requires more carbon sinks and other approaches to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. Furthermore, it will also require carbon capture technology to deal with residual emissions in energy-intensive industry that are otherwise difficult to avoid. Carbon capture and negative emissions are necessary, not just to compensate for any residual emissions, but also in their own right to reach the objectives set out in the Paris Agreement. Conventional mitigation should get precedence over compensation through negative emissions, owing to its high costs and resource demand. Trade-offs between mitigation and various negative emissions technologies should be acknowledged. Some approaches have only limited potential. Others require significant amounts of low-carbon energy and infrastructure.

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Systemic rivalry and balancing interests: Chinese investment meets EU law on the Belt and Road

Author(s): Steven Blockmans,Weinian Hu / Language(s): English

For years, the EU has refrained from criticising China’s attempts to shape globalisation according to its own interests. Member states have allowed the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) to tip the balance of power towards the companies that China owns or subsidises. Alarmed by recent Chinese takeovers in strategic industries, the EU has flagged up its intention to toughen rules on foreign investment flows into Europe. The brand-new EU Strategic Outlook on China adopts a multifaceted approach and defines the ‘Middle Kingdom’ simultaneously as a cooperation and negotiation partner with whom the Union needs to find a balance of interests, an “economic competitor” in pursuit of technological leadership, and a “systemic rival” promoting alternative models of governance. This paper takes stock of BRI investments in Europe and of member states’ concerns about economic and national security. It then examines the EU-wide legal bulwarks and regulatory responses that are intended to hedge against unfair practices. It concludes that, while a more realistic and assertive European approach toward Chinese market behaviour is welcome, the EU should take China up on its pledge to embolden the BRI with ‘soft connectivity’, i.e. a legal infrastructure, rather than risk mutual harm by adopting too protectionist a stance. This should benefit not just the EU and China but also the other ‘16+1’ countries along the central corridor of the BRI, which passes through the Caucasus, the Balkans and Eastern Europe – all in the spirit of the EU’s 2018 connectivity strategy with Asia.

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The European Court of Justice: Do all roads lead to Luxembourg?

Author(s): Allan Rosas / Language(s): English

The increasing tendency to submit questions of great political and constitutional significance to the European Court of Justice prompts the question whether the Court has become the arbiter of all major problems facing the European Union today. In discussing recent trends in case law, Judge Allan Rosas observes that de Toqueville’s description of the importance of the US Supreme Court could apply to today’s European Court of Justice. That said, the Court can only deal with questions that have been specifically submitted to it. In this paper the author refers to the EU’s external relations, asylum and immigration, economic and monetary policy, citizenship, the rule of law in general, and Brexit, as cases that would probably not have come before the Court were it not for the Treaty of Lisbon. Other explanations for the more recent reliance on the Court may be the inability of the political process to resolve the thornier issues facing the EU, and the fact that the Court is considered by many to be one of the more effective EU institutions. Finally, the author stresses the need for the Court to honour its judicial mandate and to do everything it can to preserve its legitimacy, an objective also furthered by the depoliticised appointment of judges through the so-called 255 panel procedure.

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Series:CEPS Policy Insights

Leveraging funding for energy efficiency in buildings in South East Europe

Scenarios for a Wider Europe

Sinking to Zero: the role of carbon capture and negative emissions in EU climate policy

Systemic rivalry and balancing interests: Chinese investment meets EU law on the Belt and Road

The European Court of Justice: Do all roads lead to Luxembourg?