Nick Butler writes: An intriguing process has begun in the EU, almost unnoticed outside the small world of Brussels and the shrinking circle of those who believe in an ever-closer European Union. The EU is asserting its role in the energy market.

No country is forced to give up the power to set its own energy mix. The French will not be told to start fracking for shale gas or the extensive volumes of tight oil that
exist in the Paris basin. Germany will not be required to change its policy of phasing out nuclear power. There is no proposal to unify taxation on energy production or consumption.

What changes is simply but crucially that a new level of policy making is established above the nation states.  Focus is on energy security, particularly for gas but potentially also for electricity.  Completing the internal market in energy means removing the national barriers which at present create a patchwork quilt of supply systems and prices.

In truth, the likelihood is that in the classic European way one thing will lead to another. Many of the proposals for energy network linkages — for instance between Spain and France, or through Italy into central and northern Europe — won’t be built because it is not in the interests of particular national suppliers whose business depends on limiting open competition. But once there is a European-level policy, the momentum to open the market and to sweep away the blockages of national borders will be very strong.

In the days when Europe was at war with itself, those systems were protected nation assets. Now we are in many ways, and by legal agreement, a single economic space why not unify the system?

Energy security is a matter of national security and in the end governments carry a responsibility to ensure that the lights stay on. Given market failures around the impact of carbon emissions, only the state can ensure that externalities are priced in. But state control of the market can be costly, destructive to innovation and narrowly inward looking. The new European energy union virtually ignores technical and scientific progress and has very little to say about trade links with other parts of the world, even though those links could in many cases give Europe lower cost supplies. At a first reading you would get the idea that Mr Sefcovic and his colleagues would be very happy if Europe were completely self-sufficient in energy.