“Moving Targets: Institutional Embeddedness and Domestic Politics in the Liberalization of EU Electricity Markets”

Eising, Rainer and Jabko, Nicolas. (1999) “Moving Targets: Institutional Embeddedness and Domestic Politics in the Liberalization of EU Electricity Markets” . In European Union Studies Association (EUSA) > Biennial Conference > 1999 (6th), June 2-5, 1999, Pittsburgh, PA.

Abstract

After ten years of controversial negotiations, the European Union finally took action to liberalize the electricity supply industry in 1996. Given that the longstanding debate on the organization of electricity supply was brought to an end through bilateral negotiations between France and Germany, the reform has been often presented as a straightforward French-German deal. This paper, however, argues that the French-German intergovernmental deal was only the tip of the iceberg. Perceptions of national interests evolved considerably in both countries. While France turned from initial support of the market opening to a much more defensive posture, Germany moved from skepticism to fervent support of the liberalization. The most important cause for these changes was at the EU, not at the national level. The substance and progress of the negotiations were fundamentally shaped by their embeddedness in the EU institutional context. The institutional context of EU negotiations induced several key domestic political realignments on the part of sectoral and state actors.