Explaining the decision-making process of the Energy Community

This study examines the decision-making process of the Energy Community through the means of congruence analysis. Due to many institutional similarities between the Energy Community and the European Union, two most prominent EU regional integration theories were thus employed. These are Supranationalism and Liberal Intergovernmentalism. The main research question is: “Which regional integration theory gives a better explanation of the decision-making process of the Energy Community?”. The case study was the outcome of the 16th Ministerial Council meeting. The evidence showed that the decisive role in the decision-making process was held by the European Commission and very insightful Energy Community Secretariat. Working in favor of these two supranational actors is also the institutional setup of the Energy Community. The Treaty Establishing the Energy Community appoints the European Commission as the leading policy entrepreneur. This substantially limits the role of the national governments represented in the Ministerial Council. They are unable to effectively influence the EU policy-making process and adapt the policies proposed by the European Commission. But also, they tend not to exercise even the authority given to them. There is almost no voting taking in the Ministerial Council and the Contracting Parties have never formed voting alliances. The gathered empirical evidence supports the claims of Supranationalism in almost of all of the aspects of the theory.