>> One positive element is the attempt to build a thorough Energy Policy, composed of four strategic lines, underlying an integrated vision. These strategies are not properly realised by concrete goals, which even at this level of contact with the broader public should be possible. A few tactics are put forward, that as explained above, do not exactly conform to the vision and strategies outlined. A sense of lack of commitment ends up emerging from the programme as a whole. <<

Did anyone notice that the EU-logo shows a constellation of twelve stars, posted in empty space, and lacking a symbolical centre, like a warm, beating heart? It ressembles a dial without a clockwork, which is useless, or a town square without a fountain to lend it beauty and character.
The EU's ascendance, from a six-member Union for Coal and Steel to the bureaucratic leviathan of today, was based on the availability of cheap fossil fuel. Lacking that in the near future, its administration will dwindle into a mere nuisance of empty statements and hot air.
While the Irish are chided into signing up to the Lisbon Treaty, there is a strong, new current surfacing in several EU-countries to cut back on the EU financially, and to curb its self-assumed responsibilities. Our [Dutch] Chancellor of the Exchequer (Treasury Secretary) Wouter Bos, last week, stated this in so many words, and not without approval.
As to an European energy policy, one policy for half a billion people, in so many different straits, I can't admit to any warm feelings for it. The concentration of power, and political chicanery needed for such a grand scheme to be pulled off, by definition, will be detrimental to democracy, no doubt, if left to the henchmen of this clueless, unwieldy organisation.
As our future is local, there should be room for local ingenuity and local solutions to practical problems of food production, energy, transport, housing, and water management. Diversity will be our most treasured surviving tool. In the headwinds of shrinking economies and declining international trade the EU will be wise to make itself scarce, and stop to find itself a "raison d'être" by imposing rules for everybody, which fit nobody.