Treaty of Lisbon (No. 2)

It is clear that the issue of energy, and the related issue of climate change, must be addressed at the Europe-wide level. It is not sufficient for any member state—or any nation state, in fact—to go it alone on such matters. I hesitate to say this to the hon. Gentleman, but there is a bigger picture. Our energy policy has two goals, both of which are explicitly mentioned in article 176—security of supply and combating climate change. The very first sentence of the article says that the energy policy will operate in"““the context of the establishment and functioning of the internal market and with regard for the need to preserve and improve the environment””." Those two priorities are stated explicitly, and the advantage of that is that we can pursue our national policies in delivering them, and the European Union will also work together to deliver them. Issues such as emissions trading have to be agreed at a national level. We cannot address them effectively on our own. Energy policy is a classic example of something that the European Union should be doing. In many ways, the pressures that we face on security of supply and the environment make a more compelling case for European partnership and integration here than in many other areas concerning which people get exercised about the European Union.