The regulation of renewable energy sources and especially renewable electricity has been a highly disputed legal issue. Its particularity lies in their cross-cutting nature of renewable energy sources, in the sense that they affect a variety of policy areas, such as competition, state aid, environmental policy and climate change. The effort of national governments to create incentives for the promotion of renewable electricity production has been materialized through the development of national support schemes. These schemes come, nevertheless, with a number of implications. Not only should these support schemes be in compliance with the current market obligations, but also with the EU state aid and free movement of goods provisions. The role of the European Commission, as well as that of the case law of the European Court of Justice (CJEU) has been vital in providing guiding lines in these complex matters. Against this backdrop, this paper aims to address three fundamental issues in relation to the regulation of renewable electricity at EU level. The first part of the paper presents the legal background of both conventional and renewable electricity markets in the EU and discusses the ‘bindingness’ of the targets imposed by Directive 2009/28/EC. The second part of the paper explores in detail the existing national support schemes for the promotion of RES-E and examines their market compatibility. In the last part, the interaction of national support schemes with State aid and free movement of goods provisions is analyzed, in both cases the starting point being PreussenElektra.
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