The Electricity Market Design (EMD) reform represents a pivotal opportunity to clarify and improve upon the new concepts that originated in the Clean Energy Package, such as energy sharing, and to make the internal energy market (IEM) more accessible to the EU’s citizens. However, significant questions remain about whether the European Commission’s proposal prioritises the right approach towards building the foundations of decentralised energy markets, and ensuring the EMD remains consistent with the EU’s vision, expressed in 2015, of putting citizens at the core of the energy system where they can take ownership of the energy transition.

While the European Commission proposes to open up energy sharing and to make it easier for smaller market actors to enter into power purchase agreements (PPAs), the devil is in the details. In particular, there is significant room, and therefore risk, for utilities and investors - the very ones that have been pushing up wholesale market energy prices since post-covid - to creep in and dominate the development of decentralised energy markets. As the EU builds the foundations of decentralised energy markets, we need to be clear in setting rules to ensure that smaller, less-professionalised and non-commercial market actors (local authorities, non-profit, social economic enterprises) are not simply pushed out by larger for-profit energy companies. If proper rules are not put in place, the EMD could make it harder for citizens, SMEs, local authorities and energy communities to be meaningful participants in the energy transition. This would go against the aims of the CEP and the European Green Deal.

In this position paper, REScoop.eu proposes specific amendments in order for the EMD to deliver a more democratic energy market based on the EU legal principle of equal treatment.