Browsing by Author "Talus, Ben"

This research paper covers the legal and political development of the EU energy market, specifically the development of third country company access to the EU internal natural gas market. It examines the legal and political aspects of legal developments relating to access by third country companies to the EU gas market, and certain hurdles and disputes that have contributed to the present state of the market. The research questions addressed by this paper are (1) how politics impact the development of access to the EU internal gas market for third country companies, and (2) whether the access rules can be interpreted as being discriminatory towards third country companies. The paper accordingly focuses on the treatment of third country companies that seek to access the EU market, and examines the EU’s actions, in terms of blocking or hindering certain projects’ entry into the market by treating individual actors differently from one another. It also examines the way in which politics have shaped the regulation of access to the EU gas market. In addressing these issues, the paper focuses on the legal cases concerning the Nord Stream 2 project and the ‘Lex Gazprom’ clause contained in the EU Gas Market Directive. It also assesses the relationship between law and politics in order to provide an in-depth examination of the impact of politics in shaping the EU gas market access rules for third country companies. The paper starts with an introduction to the EU energy law field and the natural gas market. This is followed by an explanatory section that covers the relevant EU and energy institutions that control the market. The emphasis is on the EU’s legislative process and the relevant institutions, which are of importance to the assessment of the legal cases set out in chapter 4 of the paper. Chapter 3 examines the situation of third countries in the EU natural gas field in detail and focuses on their legal and political treatment. Chapter 5 answers the research question by assessing the case studies set out in chapter 4 and contextualising the findings of this exercise by reference to the underlying politics and EU and international law on certain legal issues. In addition to the legal and political assessment that it provides, the paper briefly addresses certain legal theories in order to measure the subject-matter of the assessment carried out against market objectives, such as how different actors’ political goals should be handled in a legally and politically tense situation. This aspect of the paper entails assessment of the interaction between law and politics based on legal theory.