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In 2016, the Commission proposed an ambitious governance strategy in order to further the transformation of the European energy system towards the Unions' 2030 climate and energy targets. Therein the EU adopted the Regulation on the Governance of the Energy Union in 2018 to harden its otherwise soft governance. This contribution firstly aims at characterizing the 'hardness' of this soft governance. The analyses showed the introduction of harder elements to soft governance to at least a certain extend. Secondly, it explains the degree of hardness from actorcentred institutionalism perspective by analysing the trilogue of the co-legislators and the Commission. The analysis shows a successful entrepreneurial role of the Commission in those questions where it was backed by the European. The Parliament performed strongly due to powerful support of its joint committee, experienced negotiators and a wide majority voting in the plenum. In contrary, the Council showed a divided opinion in many points and was confronted with a weak presidency during the dialogue. As a result, harder elements were introduced in questions, where Commission and Parliament argued along the same lines and could even go beyond the Commissions' proposal, where Parliament and Council found points of common interest.

The German Energy Transition is one of the most important and largest infrastructure projects and one of the most significant challenges to German policy‐making. Empirical studies provide evidence for the notion that participation in the decision making process shapes local acceptance of renewable energy technology expansion. In the context of the German Energy Transition, the emphasis on participation in decision making processes seems to involve a paradox. Many different participatory measures have been implemented but many renewable energy projects do not reach a decent level of acceptability. In utilizing the concept of throughput legitimacy, we show that a major threat to legitimacy lies in the incoherent way conventional and unconventional forms of citizen participation are implemented at different scales. According to our analysis, the main challenges are to enable multi‐level participation and to transfer deliberative outcome to the representative system. In referring to innovative democratic procedures in Brazil, we present characteristics and features of participatory measures that may solve these challenges.