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In July 2019, the CJEU delivered its judgment on the case C-411/17 Inter-Environnement Wallonie and Bond Beter Leefmilieu Vlaanderen. The case relates to the protracted debate on the production and use of nuclear energy in Belgium, which at present culminated with the legislative extension of the operation of two nuclear power stations. The CJEU ruled that the extension should have only been granted after an assessment on the stations’ impact on the environment had been carried out and, thus, the national measures were in breach of EU law. However, it is here argued that the judgment does not settle the dispute: it only initiates its second phase. Accordingly, this contribution focuses on the judgment’s expected implications for EU law and for the national constitutional order.

The book deals with topical issues in the ongoing process of harmonisation in the fields of environmental and energy law. Applying critical perspectives, the contributors address a broad array of issues ranging from more general concepts and processes of harmonisation to more specific applications with regard to the domains of environmental and energy law.

Renewable energy communities can be regarded as a vehicle for increasing energy efficiency, contributing to the low-carbon energy transition target as well as empowering energy consumers. In the European Union (EU), Member States have already been interested in supporting their development, mostly using instruments pertaining to the promotion of renewable energy sources at large. But these support schemes need certain reforms, in order to inter alia better fit in specific the phenomenon of self-consumption and the rise of renewable energy communities. At the same time, the EU has recently enacted new legislation that creates a legal framework for the further development of energy communities. Member States have already put forward their draft National Energy and Climate Plans where the measures to be taken in line with the foregoing framework are presented.

This contribution examines the generation-based support schemes for renewable energy sources. It investigates the design choices that Member States have made so far and the stance that the Commission has adopted on these choices. Moreover, it provides a taxonomy of different support schemes and calls attention to the category of price instruments. Accordingly, it analyses the position of price support schemes within the new legal framework (Directive 2018/2001, 'RED II'), which adopts a rather pro-quantity instruments stance.

Technological advancements facilitate the transition to a decentralised and smart distributed generation electricity system where active customers will have a key role. Such a transition can contribute to making the electricity systems cleaner, more secure, more efficient and less expensive. Nevertheless, the promotion of distributed generation requires reforms to the applicable legislation, so that it fits the new reality. Accordingly, the Commission has put forward a proposal for a new Directive on the common rules for the internal electricity market. This proposal shows the Commission’s support in distributed generation and focuses on the promotion of self-consumption, instead of net metering, and on the empowerment of electricity customers through smart meter technologies and secure data management and data protection regimes. This proposal might originate the development of a supranational legislative framework fitting technological innovation in the field of electricity, but it is rather a basic starting point. It remains to be seen how Member States will respond to these initiatives and how they will implement the relevant Directive, when—and if—enacted.

The European Commission’s decisions in the State aid cases of Starbucks and Fiat are the first decisions in the series of the tax rulings investigations. These decisions have been criticised as excessively widening the scope of the concept of selectivity. This article, however, argues that the Commission did not overreach itself. The Commission applied a well-established methodology and integrated certain new elements into it, like the arm’s length principle, in order to respond to novel issues. This stance does not indicate a tendency towards widening the concept of selectivity; it rather signifies the Commission’s disposition to focus on the effects of the aid measures and to conduct its assessments with less formalism.

In 2016 the Commission put forward a Proposal for a revised Renewable Energy Directive for the period 2020 to 2030. This article focuses on the dilemmas on the way to this new Renewable Energy Directive, as reflected by the Commission's Proposal, but also by the European Parliament's amendments that followed in January 2018. Within this context, the Renewable Energy Directive currently in force is analyzed with the help of recent case law, and two core dilemmas are identified, to wit 1) whether the new RE target should be merely determined at the EU level or it should also be translated into national binding targets and 2) whether RE support schemes should be harmonised and open to other Member States.