The first online meeting of the Thematic Working Group, “Energy,” was held, and 25 participants attended.

The main task discussed was developing feasible policy recommendations and creating an advocacy framework for these solutions to be endorsed by regional decision-makers and the EU. The policy recommendations will be developed through the synergy and partnership of civil society organizations and the expert community within an evidence-based consultative process.

Jovan Rajić from RERI briefly reviewed previous recommendations and assessed their application by the decision-makers.

Mirko Popović, also from RERI, presented the key recommendations developed by the Advisory Committee for the current cycle. These included establishing a feasible mechanism for robust investment in decarbonization through the EU emission trading system (ETS), developing a roadmap for overcoming the obstacles in the application of the Energy Community Treaty, mainly related to Large Combustion Plants (LCP) and Industrial Emissions Directive (IED); and developing a report on the implementation of the Energy Community Treaty and its outcomes. The recommendations emphasized the importance of a more democratic and transparent decision-making system within the Energy Community. Furthermore, EU Commission annual reports should highlight breaches of the Energy Community Treaty, and extreme energy poverty reduction should be prioritized along with more decentralized energy production and the reduction of peaks in energy consumption.

The meeting underscored the need to base recommendations on experiences from the previous year, which is why one of the tasks is to produce a report that will assess the progress in implementing previous recommendations. The participants’ attitude was that recommendations should be repeated whenever possible.

Policy recommendations will continue to be developed through synergy and partnership of civil society organizations and the experts’ community within an evidence-based consultative process.