The European Union (EU) devotes significant effort and resources to coping with the energy climate problem. In this context, the EU launched the Mediterranean Solar Plan (MSP) as one of the priority projects of the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM) at the Paris Summit in July 2008. Drawing on external governance theories, this paper investigates the emergence dynamics of the Mediterranean Solar Plan as an external mode of sectoral governance and its actual capacity to thoroughly manage the EU-MPCs regulatory gap-problem and boost a region-wide institutional and regulatory reform dynamic.

This paper proceeds in three steps. It briefly introduces the theoretical base of the enquiry. It then explores the continuities and discontinuities between the internal mode of energy governance, the prevailing external mode of energy governance in the Mediterranean region and the specific mode of interaction under which the solar plan is framed. It finally scrutinises the reasons for this variation and unravels the ensuing structural limits of the Mediterranean Solar Plan in tackling the EU-MPCs regulatory gap-problem