our borders with the purpose of providing cheap, green energy for European citizens. Today, of course, this is also a matter of energy security, and ACER has steadily grown in size and im- portance ever since we established the agency. Climate election By 2018, the climate debate had reached a new level. I can- not pinpoint a single issue that made the difference, but by then, public attention had grown, and as lawmakers, we ex- perienced how the climate issue had grown in importance through citizen inquiries, lobbyist approaches, and so on. There was a climate angle to almost any policy in the system, and it all culminated with the 2019 elections, which was coined the “climate election” due to the clear climate policy mandate Eu- ropean citizens provided in the elections. The European Commission answered the people’s call by pre- senting the EU Green Deal, a historical political idea designed to decarbonise the European Union going towards 2050. For my part, I regained my seat in the European Parliament and entered my second period, knowing I had chosen the right path when I opted to enter European energy politics in 2014. Once again, I entered the ITRE committee. Soon enough, though, the Covid-19 pandemic cast its shad- ows over the world, and the legislative work slowed down for a while. Despite the pandemic turmoil, the European Commis-
panies stand on the foundation of the Danish history of wind power, energy efficiency, and district heating. It became my business in European politics to pave the way for these compa- nies and their green products and technologies in the emerg- ing CO2-neutral economy. In those early days of my career in the European Parliament, I experienced one of my thankfully few defeats in the Europe- an Parliament. Following Russia’s invasion of Krim, there was a growing concern about Putin’s next move, not least amongst my Eastern European colleagues in the European Parliament. In 2014, I went to work on the European Security Strategy with enthusiasm. Essentially, the goal was to ensure the EU moved away from our increasing dependence on Russian natural gas imports, and while such a goal seems evident today, it was not in those days. Back then, Europe’s naivety was intact, and the European Energy Security Strategy failed to be adopted during the European Parliament’s plenary session in June 2015. By the end of the term in 2018, I became a rapporteur on the establishment of the European Union Agency for the Coopera- tion of Energy Regulators (ACER). It was one of the files point- ing towards the Energy Union, and the file was close to my heart because of the European cooperation and integration involved. ACER’s mandate was and is to develop conditions for cross-border green energy, and there is something fulfilling in the idea of a Europe where green electricity flows freely across
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