ABSTRACT
With regard to coal (with the European Coal and Steel Community) and nuclear power (Euratom), energy appeared quite early on the agenda of European integration. But coal was already on its way out in the 1950s and 1960s, and nuclear power never became as important as Monnet imagined it would (Dinan, 2004). In other areas, particularly those of oil, gas and electricity, the powers granted by the member states to European authorities remained very modest for a long time. Even the oil crises of the 1970s did not bring much change to this area, as many member states developed their own policy of how to deal with OPEC (Matláry, 1997). New impulses came from the emphasis on the internal market that developed in the 1980s, reflected in the Single European Act; this included the idea of an internal market for energy, to be characterized by greater competition and market integration. This idea was specified in the second half of the 1980s by Council and Commission proposals. In the area of electricity, the new passion for deregulation and privatization led the European Commission to the idea of taking on some of the last, largest and most powerful public monopoly structures that still existed, that is the electricity suppliers. The driving force in this area was Energy Commissioner Cardoso e Cunha, who on this issue formed an alliance with two commissioners who carried particular weight with their commitment to deregulation and competition: Martin Bangemann from Directorate General (DG) Industry 1 and Leon Brittan from DG Competition (Padgett, 2001). This led to the proposal of what became Directive 96/92/EC on the internal market in electricity, a proposal that was adopted after much resistance. Many other Directives were adopted in this area, with the emphasis clearly on increasing competition (Cini/McGowan, 1998; Palinkas and Maurer, 1997); this process is still continuing.
