A dialogue process among key RES policy experts across Europe was established by the Smart Energy for Europe Platform. Aim of the dialogue is to develop shared principles that should be met by the framework for remuneration of investments in RES generation beyond 2020. Thus, the ultimate goal of this process is to promote a transparent and sound debate on the design of future policy instruments. However, this is not directly a discussion about the merits and drawbacks of quotas vs. feed-in tariffs or premiums vs. tendering or other models, nor it is an attempt to define an optimal level of European governance vs. national or sub-national subsidiarity.

We propose a sort of a meta-discussion to define and make explicit criteria with which such debates can be run. Disagreements on policy instruments and policy options are often the result of differences in the (implicit) evaluation criteria, or the weight attributed to them by different participants in the debate. The meta-discussion we are proposing will make explicit the reasons of the diverging view and this may help creating more clarity in these debates.