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European Union (Amendment) Bill

Amendment No. 204 would remove energy from the list of the European Union's shared competences as set out in the Lisbon treaty. The article on shared competences is, of course, taken practically verbatim from the EU constitution. It should also surprise no one that the way the article sets out shared competences was opposed by the Government when it was proposed. As the Government noted at the time in their amendment,"““energy is explicitly referred to here for the first time””" as a shared competence. Yet it is clear that the current status of energy has not prevented the Commission from strongly and rightly pursuing market liberalisation in that area. The claim that the new energy provisions in the treaty are in any way needed for what has always been a cross-party view of the right place of energy policy in the EU—that it should primarily be there to ensure free energy markets—is in no way borne out by the evidence.