CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2017
| Author | Pakalkaite, Vija |
|---|---|
| Title | Building the Single EU Gas Market in Hungary, Lithuania and Romania: Domestic Interests and the Dynamics of Europeanisation |
| Summary | This thesis is about building EU single gas market in 2002-2010 Hungary, 2008-2016 Lithuania, 2008-2016 Romania and 2010-2016 Hungary. Their natural gas sectors represent four different outcomes of integration according to EU policies, which is defined as market liberalisation and cross-border interconnectivity combined. From 2002 to 2010 Hungary gradually liberalised its natural gas market according to the First (1998) and Second (2003) Natural Gas Directives and embarked on building cross-border interconnectors, but from 2010 retrenched in liberalisation of household consumers. After decades of persistent status quo, Lithuania changed its natural gas market in a matter of several years from 2009 in a dual reform: it implemented the ownership unbundling option envisaged in the Third Natural Gas Directive of 2009 and built an LNG terminal following the Security of Supply Regulation of 2010. In 2008-2016 Romania, however, the status quo continued almost through the most of the research period: EU internal market directives and cross-border interconnectivity projects were implemented late. These cases explain why and how the EU agenda to create single natural gas market gives very heterogeneous outcomes across member states. The principal explanatory approach used in this thesis is the interplay between domestic interests and the policies of the European Commission and the EU, which merges the Europeanisation framework by Knill and Lehmkuhl (2002) with political/economics interests. The thesis claims that EU instruments related to the natural gas sector and the Commission impose structural limitations and freedoms, in other words, opportunity structures, that affect the behaviour of the domestic actors. EU policies affect power distribution between political and sectorial domestic actors and shifts the gas sector towards reforms if the initial balance of power is in equilibrium. Pro-integration actors within the domestic structure proactively use changes in opportunity structures. However, in cases of dominance of particular interest on the domestic level that diverge from EU policies, EU policies will have an effect only in as much as non-compliance would be costly to the anti-integration domestic actors. To understand why these countries chose so different paths, this thesis uses a combination of congruence and process tracing methods. It uses two causal process tracing mechanisms, a mechanism of ‘EU opportunism’ in the cases characterised by balanced and a mechanism of ‘EU leverage’ in the cases characterised by dominant interest structures. Elite and expert interviews with 48 people were conducted and a procedure of right to access information from the Commission was used. The first mechanism was identified in Hungary from 2002 to 2010 and Lithuania from the 2008 general election to 2016. Within the identified mechanism, the domestic interplay of interest differed: in Hungary the push to deregulate and interconnect the gas sector strongly came from the sectorial actors, whereas in Lithuania from executive politicians. The second mechanism was found in 2008-2016 Romania and 2010-2016 Hungary. Within this mechanism, interplay of different interests resulted that household segment liberalisation and cross border interconnectivity stalled in Romania, but in Hungary the cross-border interconnectivity continued despite the retrenchment in the household segment liberalisation. |
| Supervisor | Sitter Nick |
| Department | School of Public Policy PhD |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2017/pakalkaite_vija.pdf |
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