European, Comparative & Transnational Research Hub Seminar - The development of EU energy law through informal means

Alongside legislation, EU energy law has developed through non-binding instruments and through bodies established without a founding legal act, such as the Florence and Madrid Fora. This informality is constitutive of the field rather than incidental to it: it persisted after the Treaty of Lisbon conferred a specific energy competence, shifting from substituting for missing powers to complementing legislation, and an instrument's form does not reliably reveal its legal status. Against demands for a specific legal basis or broader judicial review, the article argues that informal instruments need no separate empowerment: they participate in their author's competence to adopt binding measures, and their authority is derivative. They become unlawful where they secure compliance through an appearance of binding backing that their author's powers do not supply, a pathology the Court's case law on reviewability addresses from the opposite direction. Informality is therefore lawful to the extent that it remains visibly informal, and the proper remedy is transparency about legal status.

Speaker: Matti Gurreck (visiting postdoc from University of Eastern Finland)

This seminar is open to the public and will operate on a first-come, first-served basis.

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