> The ultimate aim is to create a new truly European company structure. We call it EU Inc., with a single and simple set of rules that will apply seamlessly all over our Union. So that business can operate across Member States much more easily. Our entrepreneurs, the innovative companies, will be able to register a company in any Member State within 48 hours – fully online. They will enjoy the same capital regime all across the EU. Ultimately, we need a system where companies can do business and raise financing seamlessly across Europe – just as easily as in uniform markets like the US or China. If we get this right – and if we move fast enough – this will not only help EU companies grow. But it will attract investment from across the world.
> Which brings me to the second focus – investment and capital. We are now building the Savings and Investment Union. We need a large-scale, deep and liquid capital market that attracts a wide range of investors. This will allow businesses to find the funding they need – including equity – at lower cost here in Europe. We have made proposals on market integration and supervision to ensure our financial market is more integrated. This covers trading, post-trading, and asset management – as well as driving innovation and making our supervisory framework more efficient. This will help ensure that capital flows where it is needed – to scaleups, to SMEs, to innovation, to industry.
> Third priority: building an interconnected and affordable energy market – a true energy union. Energy is a chokepoint – for both companies and households. Just look at the dispersion of prices across European electricity hubs. Europe needs an energy blueprint that pulls together all the parts. This is our Affordable Energy Action Plan. For example, we are investing massively in our energy security and independence, with interconnectors and grids – this is for the homegrown energies that we are trying to promote as much as possible, nuclear and renewables. To bring down prices and cut dependencies. To put an end to price volatility, manipulation and supply shock. But we now need to speed up this transition. Because homegrown, reliable, resilient and cheaper energy will drive our economic growth, deliver for Europeans and secure our independence.
As a Swede the third one is terrifying, unifying the energy market has been catastrophic for us, both price and environment wise.
The latest is added taxes due to choke points designed by EU from the first place..
As a Swede(working in the energy sector no less), Sweden has only themselves to blame for their catastrophic decisions, like killing a world leading nuclear industry. Don’t blame Germany for Swedens incredibly stupid decision to shut down functioning nuclear reactors prematurely.
Previously Sweden was much tighter coupled to German prices, but since fossil fuels were cheap people didn’t really notice.
Today due to CO2 cap and trade fossil emissions are expensive. [1]
Couple it with a massive renewable buildout leading to a decoupling of the prices that didn’t happened before.
We now have maximum volatility. Jumping between expensive fossil prices and an absolutely mindbogglingly large surplus leading to essentially free energy.
As Germany, and the rest of Europe, transitions to renewables we will spend less and less time on fossil fuel marginal prices and see our energy systems stabilize on renewable and storage prices. Outside of emergency reserve style situations.
It's the Euro all over again, mostly because of this:
> Just look at the dispersion of prices across European electricity hubs.
Same Swedes were complaining (and still are!) about having to bail out the poorer members of the Union, should Sweden adopt the Euro and have a tighter integration with the Eurozone.
The common motivation of the EU is to smooth out these things across the countries, so we don't have these wild differences between countries. That might mean electricity gets more expensive for some members, and cheaper for others, but overall should lead to better usage across everyone. Basically socialism, applied to energy, so if you're OK with that for people, health and other things, maybe it makes sense to be fine with it for energy too?
Well it didn’t work for the Euro, and that didn’t require building massive on demand infrastructure that degrades over distance.
Socialism for people only work within the confines of a society, my parents putting up solar panels to offset german fears of nuclear is far away from them paying taxes so their neighbor can get health care.
What? Yes, it did work for the Euro, countries that are participating are now more equal than they were before, which is the goal. Who knows what will happen in the future, maybe Greece or someone else will truly sink the entire union, but it hasn't happened yet, so lets not confidently claim "it didn't work".
> my parents putting up solar panels to offset german fears of nuclear is far away from them paying taxes so their neighbor can get health care
That's been the thinking for a long time, but for how long can we continue thinking like this? If the world is fucked, it'll be fucked for all of us, not just for people in Sweden or Germany, so the faster we can realize we're all in the same boat, the better.
Equal in that hey suffer together? When even the SEK outperforms the EUR in times of distress you know it’s incredibly bad. Is it better that all of Europe sinks, maybe, but I’m happy I’m not losing my job because of pension plans in France or financial neglect in Greece, and I’m sure they would say the same if roles were reversed. And to be clear, it’s not about the people, but how governing is done.
The same boat is actually a good metaphor, you tend to want many smaller ones and not one big, risk of losing everything vs something (to a point).
Yes, quite literally "hey lets suffer together", this is what we've signed up to, and want. Good for everyone and bad for everyone, we're linked and this helps us focus more on helping each other, rather than just focusing on ourselves.
> The same boat is actually a good metaphor, you tend to want many smaller ones and not one big, risk of losing everything vs something (to a point).
Yeah, that's probably the two mindsets that differ here. EU was created with the goal of "better one big boat than many small", because we've tried the "many small boats" approach for millennials, and somehow we in Europe always end up starting wars against each other. We've had (more or less) continent-wide peace now, for a good while (maybe the longest it's ever been? Not sure), and probably because of the reason that we're more connected now, instead of sitting alone in our tiny boats.
I may tell from Polish perspective - loosely speaking: Germany and Austria used to share single bidding zone: electricity was produced by wind at the north and then consumed by factories at the south. The problem: no sufficient grid connection - Polish and Czech grids were used instead, what caused major problems - loop flows. It lasted from 2001 to 2018.
Unification needs to be real, including grids, not on paper only.
Sweden has plenty of cheap hydropower. But as prices are now tied to countries like Germany which made catastrophic decisions around energy, Swedes have to pay much more than if Sweden had an independent energy market.
Presumably because Sweden is selling some of that cheap power to Germany.
The solution to which is to generate even more power in Sweden (so you can sell it off cheap and have it cheap too) or that Germany produces power more cheaply so that it's not giving Sweden so much money for electricity. Both of these should happen if the market is set up well.
That has nothing to do with the EU, it's just capitalism. Even if the EU wouldn't exist, the energy companies would have found a way to sell the cheap Swedish hydropower to Germany.
In that case it sounds like "unification was bad" is an unfair characterization. Unification was bad by proxy, due to the bad decisions of Germany. If Germany had made better decisions, unification would've been good as Sweden would've had lower prices on a larger market.
”Bad or good by proxy” is how all policy plays out though, your ideas mean nothing if reality says otherwise. And Germany going coal was well known by time of unification (one might think it was because of that, tinfoil hat on).
Having to pay more because of Germany going fossil fuel like crazy. When there’s no wind and it’s dark they cause most of EU to suffer since the cost of their coal plants are so high.
We also send a lot of green energy out of the country only to import coal powered from Denmark (not as major, mostly happens due to high consumptions)
And we’re also getting a price spike fee, don’t dare to put on the dish washer when your neighbor is!
All this in a country where electricity was almost free (to be fair, our dismantling of nuclear doesn’t help here)
Energy is expensive because burning fossil fuels is expensive due to taxes. A coal power plant pays around two times more for emissions than for the coal itself. They're trying to solve a problem which they have created themselves in the first place.
So you suggestion is to remove the taxes and go back to mostly using coal for power? Or what's the suggestion here? Because those taxes are there because of the pollution, so unless you have better way of getting rid of the pollution yet using coal for power, I'm not sure there is something better than trying to tax it away so other source can be focused by business and industry instead.
that is simply untrue. China, for as bad as it has historically been in terms of environment, it has invested waaaay more than anybody else in clean energy [1]. It's a game we are all in together and things are moving forward, albeit too slowly.
That is good, because it is a lie that others are not following.
People love to point to China for their emissions, completely avoiding that China, as the workbench of the world, essentially is burdened with the emissions of the world.
Developing nations skip the fossil fuel stage entirely because Solar in particular and at a ceratain point wind is just cheaper than buying Oil and natural gas. Chinese EVs are also increasingly popular in emerging markets, not because they are more environmentally friendly, but because they are more cost effective to operate.
Wether or not it is because of environmental concerns or not, the world is moving towards cleaner technology, specifically it is also more efficient.
Considering that we in Europe have a remarkable absence of easily accessible fossil fuels, Europe should be continuing to push towards renewable technologies
It does matter to follow through with your values though. Humanity isn't supposed to be just minmaxing economical output, a common set of values that we strive for is much more inspiring than burning everything to the ground, and leaving a world of ashes for future generations to capture maximum economical output right now.
I don't think it's a hard mindset to understand, giving up because others aren't taking it as seriously is the cowardly way to go about it. It's much more meaningful to show it can be done, help to scale technologies to become cheaper and more accessible for poorer countries, and inspire others with examples that it can be done so action can spread.
If Europe cooperates and the RoW cooperates, nobody gains a relative economic advantage and our world doesn't burn.
If Europe cooperates and the RoW defects, Europe loses relative economic advantage and our world still burns.
If Europe defects and RoW cooperates, Europe gains relative economic advantage and our world (maybe) still burns.
If Europe defects and RoW defects, nobody gains an economic advantage and our world burns to a RCP8.5 crisp.
Obviously the preferred siutation is everybody cooperating so our world doesn't burn and nobody gains or loses an economic advantage. But the Schelling point is everybody defecting and burning our world to a crisp.
Everyone ought to push for global cooperation; we've all gotta live here and it'd be nice not to burn our only planet. But if Europe cooperates while the rest of the world defects (i.e. the current situation today), you're an idiot.
Indeed, but if everyone starts thinking "No one else is lowering their emissions so why would I?", how are we supposed to ever make any sort of progress?
Someone doing something is always better than no one doing anything, can we at least agree on that?
Fair point, I agree, that isn't obvious. What is obvious to both of us (I assume?) is that pollution has to be lower, not just in the EU, but across the world. But we (Europeans) can mostly just influence what happens inside of Europe, EU and our countries. Hence, we do what we can to reduce it, where taxing it is one approach.
With that said, more investments into other energy sources are totally welcome, and I don't think that should mean we also need to tax pollution less, we can have both :)
> But it is by no means obvious that carbon taxes are the right path.
When the government says that the market should do something, people complain about government interference. When the government lets the market do something, but sets the right incentives, people are complaining about it again.
Co2 taxation is effectively internalizing the cost of co2 pollution. The price goes up the more we pollute, because we have less budget until we cannot reach our goals anymore.
Energy is expensive because fossil fuels are destroying the only planet we have.
If a person is taking lifesaving medicine that unfortunately makes their skin itch, you wouldn't call itchiness "a problem which they have created themselves in the first place"...
Europe is energy poor. We will never be able to compete on raw cost with the US, China and similar.
Our path forward are through renewables, which today are vastly cheaper than fossil fuels.
We decide the speed of the transition to green cheap energy by how much we tax fossil fuels. Low taxes = slow transition. High taxes = fast transition.
That is a dubious claim of the accounting chain for expense of fossil fuels, which also ignores defensive tariffs for energy sources like Chines manufactured solar, wind and batteries. Though maybe it speaks to more beaucratic process around the energy not the core energy costs itself.
> Which brings me to the second focus – investment and capital. We are now building the Savings and Investment Union. We need a large-scale, deep and liquid capital market that attracts a wide range of investors. This will allow businesses to find the funding they need – including equity – at lower cost here in Europe. We have made proposals on market integration and supervision to ensure our financial market is more integrated. This covers trading, post-trading, and asset management – as well as driving innovation and making our supervisory framework more efficient. This will help ensure that capital flows where it is needed – to scaleups, to SMEs, to innovation, to industry.
> Third priority: building an interconnected and affordable energy market – a true energy union. Energy is a chokepoint – for both companies and households. Just look at the dispersion of prices across European electricity hubs. Europe needs an energy blueprint that pulls together all the parts. This is our Affordable Energy Action Plan. For example, we are investing massively in our energy security and independence, with interconnectors and grids – this is for the homegrown energies that we are trying to promote as much as possible, nuclear and renewables. To bring down prices and cut dependencies. To put an end to price volatility, manipulation and supply shock. But we now need to speed up this transition. Because homegrown, reliable, resilient and cheaper energy will drive our economic growth, deliver for Europeans and secure our independence.