Grids Package: EU plan that could leave prosumers and electric cars with empty batteries

The European Commission's proposal for the modernisation of the EU's energy networks, presented on Wednesday 10 December, officially presents itself as a leap forward, but if we look closely at the documents, from the "Guidance on efficient and timely grid connections” to the "Affordable Energy Action Plan”, the proposal for a revised TEN-E Regulation and the Grids Package communication, what emerges is a conglomerate of declarative ambitions, structural shortcomings, increased risks and a series of insufficiently assessed technical implications, which could directly affect consumers, industry and the energy security of the Member States. In essence, the Commission identifies the problems perfectly, but offers solutions that either do not attack their real root or open dangerous doors for the future of control over energy and grid flows.

The European Energy Networks Package promises modernization, but it hides a major risk for citizens: the forced integration of private batteries into the balancing of the grid. Under the pretext of "flexibility”, the new framework could turn prosumers and electric car owners into mere energy reservoirs of the system, vulnerable to unannounced discharges when operators deem it necessary. While Brussels talks about efficiency and competitiveness, millions of Europeans risk waking up in the morning with empty batteries and seriously compromised energy autonomy.

Moreover, the mandatory introduction, through the modernization package, of the concept of "flexible connection agreements”, represents a major vulnerable point of the European Commission proposal. In theory, they allow the connection of several units - producers, batteries, large consumers - even in areas with insufficient capacity. In practice, this means that operators can limit, reduce or control the energy delivered or produced depending on the state of the grid.

Furthermore, the proposal opens the door wide to the use of private batteries as systemic resources. On a technical and legal level, their integration into the category of "energy vehicles” or "systemic assets” would allow operators to extract energy from batteries in the name of grid stability. None of the documents presented by the European Commission on Wednesday explicitly exclude this possibility, but strongly promote flexibility, demand-response and the full integration of storage into balancing mechanisms.

In the logic of the future rules - if they are adopted in their current form by the European Parliament, once connected to the grid, a battery becomes a flexible element of the system, and the system decides when this flexibility is needed. This could lead to a situation where prosumers leave their batteries charging or full in the evening, and in the morning they find them almost empty, because the grid has taken over the energy during the night to cover local electricity consumption peaks or to solve congestion.

The same risk looms over electric car owners: in the absence of very clear legal guarantees, bidirectional charging (V2G - vehicle-to-grid), which the Commission encourages through the legislative package, could turn personal cars into buffer batteries for the energy system, vulnerable to unannounced discharges. Revealingly, in none of the texts does the Commission establish that this flexibility must be optional, contractual, voluntary and 100% controlled by the user. Although it acknowledges that half of the EU countries are already facing huge queues for connection, in some countries over 50% of the reserved capacity remains unused, blocking real projects, the proposed solution is not to eliminate the factors that cause the blockage, but to rewrite the rules so that the network can better "use” what it has, namely the flexibility of consumers. Concretely: it does not increase the physical capacity enough, but opens the way to direct access to private storage resources.

• Centralisation of grid investment decisions, the aim of the Grids Package

The European Commission also insists that grid modernisation is essential for competitiveness, with European electricity prices for industry almost double compared to 2014-2020, and in 2024 EU prices were 2.2 times higher than in the US and twice as high as in China. However, the Commission treats the causes of these differences superficially. It explicitly acknowledges that almost 29% of EU production still relies on fossil fuels and that 98% of oil and gas imports expose Europe to geopolitical volatility, but its policy response calls for a massive expansion of electrification without assuming that current grids cannot bear this burden.

Congestion costs, already at euro5.2 billion in 2022, with a risk of euro26 billion by 2030, are mentioned, but the Commission takes no responsibility for the bureaucratic delays that it has also created through its own authorisation rules. Instead of radically simplifying these procedures, the proposal presented on Wednesday 10 December introduces new levels of coordination, new structures, new plans, new analysis cycles, which will slow down the process at exactly the moment when Europe needs speed, not hypertrophied regulatory architectures.

The Commission then argues for a "central EU scenario”, an approach in which network planning would be led from Brussels and not by operators who understand the technical realities of each national system. While this idea is presented as progress, it ignores the fact that such centralisation can lead to wrong investment decisions, unjustified costs and tensions between Member States. Many member states and operators have already rejected the idea of top-down control over planning, arguing that TYNDPs should reflect system needs, not abstract political projects where Brussels decides what is a priority for the whole of Europe. According to them, this move turns infrastructure into a political instrument, not a technical pillar of energy security.

• TEN-E projects selected for funding by the European Commission

The TEN-E package also highlights major problems. For example, the Commission admits that cross-border projects are so late that half of the needs for 2030 will not be covered (41 out of 88 Gigawatts needed). The answer? The introduction of a "gap filling” mechanism that allows the Commission to impose the selection of projects deemed strategic by Brussels, even if member states do not agree. In reality, this represents a coercive recentralization of energy planning, with huge risks: redistributed costs, imposed investments, structural dependence between states and possible energy security vulnerabilities.

The Communication on the Grids Package talks about cost sharing, bundling and special purpose vehicles, as a new method of spreading the infrastructure bill. Basically, projects that bring benefits to other states will also be paid by consumers in the host countries, which may create an additional increase in bills, at a time when the Commission itself recognizes that prices in the EU are already at levels that cause massive deindustrialization.

Far from reducing costs, the legislative package proposed on Wednesday by the Community Executive risks amplifying them through politically ordered investments and arbitrarily distributed finances. And all the while, the Commission ignores a fundamental reality: grid bottlenecks stem not just from a physical lack of capacity, but from years of incoherent policies, bureaucratic regulations, chronic underinvestment, administrative delays and the lack of an industrial strategy on supply chains for energy infrastructure.

In conclusion, while the European Commission presents its proposals as a major step towards a robust Energy Union, the reality on the documents shows a system of incomplete, dangerous and technically insufficiently substantiated rules. Instead of delivering energy security, the package risks creating dependency on consumer flexibility and their private batteries. Instead of reducing bills, it may redistribute costs to households and industry. Instead of accelerating modernisation, it may introduce new levels of complexity and centralised control.

Europe needs better grids, not arbitrary access to citizens' energy. And if this direction is not corrected now, we risk entering an era in which individual energy autonomy becomes a fiction, and the system can decide when and how much energy from people's batteries should be extracted "for the good of the grid".