European Union (Amendment) Bill

Amendment No. 70 refers to the provisions in the Lisbon treaty that would create a specific legal base for energy. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Howell, for moving his amendment and pay tribute to his experience and expertise in this particular field, having been a previous Secretary of State. The appearance of a separate energy article reflects the growing importance of energy as a political and economic issue in the European Union, and the need for more effective action at Union level to achieve our energy and climate security objectives. The Stern report states that 65 per cent of global emissions come from energy. Meanwhile, the world’s demand for energy rises inexorably. The dilemma facing us is how to meet our energy needs and, at the same time, stabilise our climate. This is very much a 21st century security and prosperity challenge. The new article will help to ensure that policies on energy markets, energy security and energy efficiency are coherent and mutually reinforcing. This is vital if we in the UK are to achieve our own energy and climate change priorities, and to successfully drive the transition to a high-growth, low-carbon economy in Europe. The creation of a separate energy article has the advantage of providing a transparent means of enacting energy policy at the EU level. It is not new EU action on energy, but in the past we had to rely, in particular, on other, more general articles in existing treaties. Examples include Article 175 for the environment or Article 195 for internal market measures. A separate energy article provides better governance and better regulation. It brings clarity to what the EU intends to do and how it will achieve it. EU action on energy is not a new invention. The Maastricht treaty listed energy as an activity of the Community, although the Community had acted on energy before. As the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, reminded us, European-level action on energy goes back to the inception of the coal and steel community and EURATOM more than 50 years ago. Today, the EU has already implemented a wide range of measures on energy policy under existing legal bases of the EC treaty. Although the Lisbon treaty provides a dedicated legal base for EU action on specific areas of energy policy for the first time, the Committee should not be under any illusions that the Union has been taking action for some years to open energy markets. We support that liberalising action. The Lisbon treaty confirms that qualified majority voting will continue to apply to the majority of future decisions made on energy policy at the EU level. My noble friend Lord Rowlands, who I am very glad is taking part in this debate, asked some questions about QMV. I emphasise that, in the past, energy measures were taken under qualified majority voting. As I understand it, there will be nothing specific under QMV that was not there before, but, of course, it was not under the energy legal base. It was under the other provisions that I have tried to describe.