Participatory Governance for the roll-out of the Energy Union (Policy Brief)

The document argues that the energy transition requires a participatory governance approach to ensure public acceptance and the effective integration of prosumers and energy communities. It advocates for the full implementation of the Aarhus Convention and Maastricht Recommendations, highlighting that current public consultation processes, such as those for National Energy and Climate Plans (NECPs), have often been ineffective. The brief provides a detailed framework for future consultations, including specific timelines and the recognition of prosumers as a distinct stakeholder group.

• Participatory governance for the Energy Union must be grounded in three fundamental rights: access to information, public participation, and access to justice, which allow prosumers and energy communities to influence legislation and administrative decisions.
• The Aarhus Convention and the Maastricht Recommendations serve as the primary regulatory and guidance frameworks for ensuring these participatory rights in environmental and energy matters across the EU.
• While the right to request information is generally well-implemented, there are significant gaps in the active dissemination of environmental information and the provision of background evidence to facilitate public participation.
• Access to justice remains a major challenge in the EU due to a lack of general EU legislation implementing the Aarhus Convention's review procedures, leading to disparities among Member States.
• Public consultations on draft National Energy and Climate Plans (NECPs) in several countries were found to be ineffective, often occurring too late to allow for meaningful amendments or lacking transparency in timelines.
• Specific shortcomings in NECP consultations included the use of unrelated documents as proxies for consultation in Portugal, a lack of public timelines in Spain and Sweden, and limited stakeholder involvement in Italy.
• To improve future legislative transpositions of the RED II and Electricity Directive, the document recommends a two-stage consultation process with a notification period of at least 3 months and a minimum of 1 month for public comments.
• Prosumers and energy communities should be formally recognized as a distinct stakeholder group to ensure their specific interests are accounted for in energy policy developments.

APA

Toporek, M. (2020). Participatory Governance for the roll-out of the Energy Union (Policy Brief). ClientEarth. https://www.clientearth.org/media/xfhfhyvb/participatory-governance-for-the-roll-out-of-the-energy-union-coll-en.pdf

Chicago

Toporek, Marta. Participatory Governance for the roll-out of the Energy Union (Policy Brief). ClientEarth, 2020. https://www.clientearth.org/media/xfhfhyvb/participatory-governance-for-the-roll-out-of-the-energy-union-coll-en.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Toporek |first1=Marta |title=Participatory Governance for the roll-out of the Energy Union (Policy Brief) |publisher=ClientEarth |date=13 March 2020 |url=https://www.clientearth.org/media/xfhfhyvb/participatory-governance-for-the-roll-out-of-the-energy-union-coll-en.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{toporek2020participatory, author = {Toporek, Marta}, title = {{Participatory Governance for the roll-out of the Energy Union (Policy Brief)}}, institution = {ClientEarth}, year = {2020}, month = mar, url = {https://www.clientearth.org/media/xfhfhyvb/participatory-governance-for-the-roll-out-of-the-energy-union-coll-en.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }