The Commission’s new recommendations to fight energy poverty and enhance consumers’ rights are welcomed, but Member States might not implement them without binding targets and new funds
On 10 March 2026, in response to the second spike in fossil fuel prices in less than 5 years, the European Commission published its Citizen Energy Package (CEP). The Package is a non-legislative initiative giving recommendations to Member States’ governments on how to decrease energy bills, enhance consumers’ rights, fight energy poverty, and encourage capitals to properly implement existing legislation.
The CEP highlights community-owned renewable energy as a key tool to achieve affordability, local energy control, and energy independence. It does so through 9 actions, ranging from reduced taxes on renewable energy compared to fossil fuels, to guidelines on how to establish energy communities.
In a context of geopolitical instability and painful fossil fuel dependencies, the logic of the Citizen Energy Package is a solid one: empower citizens, decrease dependencies, and fight energy poverty. The question, however, remains whether the CEP has enough bite to deliver on its promises.
From reducing taxes to encouraging innovative financial tools to lower bills
The CEP includes both positive elements and suggestions for improvement.
Let’s start with the main positive elements. The Commission encourages Member States to:
- Remove non-energy levies from bills — as some countries include public broadcasting taxes in energy bills — and lower VAT to the maximum amount possible. The Commission expects these reductions to save households up to EUR 200/year.
- Lower network costs, encourage flexibility in the grid, and pledge to work with national regulatory authorities to define network tariffs in such a way that they incentivise matching energy production with consumption.
- Encourage the use of innovative financing tools such as social leasing, where citizens can procure renewable technologies at zero upfront cost, paying them off instead through instalments.
It also recommends that companies increase transparency in their energy bills to make them understandable, offer customers the best tariff for their consumption profile, and provide them with early warnings when consumption goes beyond the expected level.
Additionally, knowing that 1 in every 10 Europeans can no longer adequately warm their homes, the CEP empowers national, regional, and local authorities to tackle energy poverty through the Social Climate Fund, the Cohesion Funds, the Energy Poverty Advisory Hub, as well as the LIFE programme that MUSE-DHC benefits from. Moreover, the Commission will also publish guidance for Member States on how to design appropriate disconnection safeguards, so that citizens no longer face the threat of energy disruption.
Finally, to strengthen its action, the Commission will soon deliver an Energy Communities Action Plan to increase citizen-led energy by a factor of 10, in order to reach 90 GW by 2030. To do so — and considering the patchy implementation of energy community legislation across national governments — the Commission will issue guidance to Member States on how to set up well-designed enabling frameworks for community energy. This is certainly a welcome development for initiatives like MUSE-DHC, which bring renewable district heating and cooling into citizens’ hands.
The quicksand: no binding targets, no extra funds, no real commitment
A closer look at the file shows that it does not include any enforcement mechanisms to reach its objectives, and no reference is made to the need for national governments to implement the current energy community framework. Considering Member States’ inability to abide by EU law to deliver energy democratisation, a voluntary framework seems to be based on goodwill. A key lesson learned from the past is that national governments are unlikely to move a finger unless there are legally binding targets to meet and appropriate enforcement from the Commission.
Secondly, the CEP ignores the growing issue of corporate capture, where private entities disguise themselves as energy communities, leading to the embezzlement of public funds that were meant for community initiatives.
Thirdly, the Citizen Energy Package’s objectives are not accompanied by additional sources of funding. This is particularly short-sighted, as complex community projects such as community-led district heating require funding streams, particularly for the first development stages of the project. While there are some good practices in the EU for community-led heating and cooling funds, such as in Ireland and the Netherlands, this is by no means the norm across the EU-27.
MUSE-DHC will continue its work to democratise thermal energy across the EU. However, the replication of its results might be negatively affected without an appropriate Citizen Energy Package.
Overall, the CEP would have the potential to decrease bills, empower citizens, and protect the most vulnerable, were it not built on a foundation of quicksand.
