OREANDA-NEWS. January 21, 2014. The fourth volume of the Energy Law Research Forum book EU Energy Law and Policy Issues is now available. The book has become a reference for research and literature, as well as for the Court of Justice of the European Union. SORAINEN associate Mari Matjus co-authored the book, focusing on independence requirements for national energy regulators.

Mari Matjus explores the requirement on EU Member States to ensure that national energy regulatory authorities are independent from their governments. Research reveals that Estonia has not achieved implementation of the independence requirements prescribed by EU Directives 2009/72/EC and 2009/737EC. Under Estonian law, the designated national regulatory authority – the Estonian Competition Authority – is accountable to a Government minister, who must appoint and release from office the head of the authority.

The chapter is based on the Master’s dissertation written by Mari Matjus at the University of Oxford under the supervision of Angus Johnston, a Fellow in Law at University College Oxford, who previously served as Senior Lecturer at the University of Cambridge.

The book addresses issues in which SORAINEN has experience, such as investment protection, liberalisation of energy markets and interconnectors, price regulation and REMIT:

I. ’Opt-out’ Clauses for EU Energy Islands in the Third Liberalisation Package: Striking Balances?

II. Regulatory Exemptions for Electricity Interconnectors: the Experience of Existing European Cases

VI. Non-EU National Investors’ Legal Status under European Union Law after the Treaty of Lisbon

VIII. Offshore Electricity Production: Does the Current EU Regime Provide Sufficient Guarantees to Investors?

IX. Price Regulation in the Energy Sector in the EU – Here to Stay?

XIII. Insider Trading and Market Manipulation in Wholesale Energy Markets: The Impact of REMIT

XIV. Regulation of Electricity Network Tariffs and the Principles of Legal Certainty and Legitimate Expectations

The editors of the book are Bram Delvaux, of Counsel at Linklaters Brussels office and Senior Research Fellow at the University of Leuven; Michael Hunt, energy lawyer at Stibbe Brussels office; and Kim Talus, Professor of European Law and Director of the LLM programme in energy law at the University of Eastern Finland.