SUMMER recess continues in Brussels so it is worth looking into one of the policy areas likely to dominate the next few years (and indeed beyond) once MEPs and Commissioners are back in town: Energy.

Energy policy has been integral to the development of the EU from the get go.

The modern EU evolved out of the European Coal and Steel Community, which was itself an attempt to intertwine the industries crucial to any future war effort to an extent that no state would be able to go rogue without the other states seeing it well in advance.

This was achieved through the then six states agreeing to common targets, enhanced co-ordination, mutual assistance, and constant transparent verification by mutual common institutions that these targets were being worked towards.

The elected leaders, MPs and civil servants of all member states would be constantly meeting each other to debate and agree these plans, thereby becoming more familiar, even friendly, with each other and hopefully less likely to go to war.

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The dynamic throughout the EU’s evolution is that the member states always resist “ceding power” to the EU because they think they do things better closer to home, and the EU always seeks to expand it because they think we can achieve more acting in concert on a bigger scale. Both are, of course, correct.

Each expansion of competence for the EU has always been hotly argued and finely negotiated. But there is nothing in the EU that is about controlling the member states – it is about making sure the things the member states have agreed to do are actually happening.

This is underpinned by the duty of Sincere Co-operation, a fundamental principle of the EU: that states will act in good faith and will honestly work towards implementing the things they’ve agreed to.

It’s not always gone smoothly and it has been sorely tested lately, but it is a basic principle that the aims agreed at summit meetings should be implemented, or else what’s the point?

And energy policy is undergoing a root and branch transformation with the new impetus towards a new European Energy Union. This is not just a presentational gimmick, the EU is pushing hard towards a far more coherent and co-ordinated approach to energy across the member states.

Different member states will of course have very different approaches – strongly pro-nuclear France and strongly anti-nuclear (much as many regret shutting down the nukes now given events in Ukraine) Germany being two good examples.

But, if we are all agreed that we need to decarbonise and work towards net zero, let’s do it together and make it real.

The Political Guidelines outlined by Commission President Dr Ursula von den Leyen in Strasbourg last month have some very big-ticket energy commitments. A new Clean Industrial Deal will be brought forward in the first 100 days of the mandate.

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This will prepare the way towards the 90% emission-reduction target for 2040, underpinned by a European Climate Law.

An Industrial Decarbonisation Accelerator Act will support industries and companies through the transition. The EU is putting serious money behind scaling-up investment in clean energy infrastructure and technologies, grid infrastructure, storage capacity and transport infrastructure for captured CO2.

Also, investment in energy efficiency measures, the digitalisation and cross border working of the energy system and the deployment of a hydrogen network.

Except for viewers in Scotland. And indeed the UK.

I served on the European Parliament’s Industry Research and Energy Committee and always backed investment in energy connections precisely because we need to be wired into the market to maximise our staggering natural renewables potential.

Unlike the old-style command and control state run energy networks, renewables happen where they happen, and that is precisely why we need political and economic control of them to make sure we’re not the Klondyke.

But we do need significant funding to expand the connection capacity to make the vision of Scotland as Europe’s Green Powerhouse real.

It is all the sadder that while the EU is now getting serious, there’s little clarity over what the UK’s involvement in all these plans will be.

Worse, there’s even a risk that UK companies could be not just excluded but penalised as a third country given the EU will not make participation easy or cheap to non-members.

This can be fixed of course, Norway is an integral part of the EU Single Market and is all over energy plans in Brussels. We need to do the same. In energy, even more than in trade, geography counts.

We have a huge resource that the world is interested in, and we need somewhere to sell our abundant clean green power, hugely benefitting the people of Scotland.

It is ours, but we’ll need help to develop it.  We need to make sure that is done in a way that maintains control and revenues in Scotland.

The EU is setting up structures that will do just that, where I have my doubts on UK plans (to the extent we’ve seen any detail of them) as they seem to be more extractive than sustainable.

But the EU’s plans dwarf anything the UK will do, and as the most energy rich part of the European continent we need to make sure we’re all over them.