The European Union (EU) is one of the first major regions to propose binding greenhouse-gas (GHG) emission reduction targets. Specifically, the EU aims to cut GHG by at least 55% by 2030 and become the first climate-neutral continent by 2050. To achieve these targets, the EU has set up a series of public funding instruments to support proposed investments in renewables and energy efficiency projects, including but not limited to geothermal projects. A wide range of projects are envisaged, from innovative to more mature, well-established technologies, and from small-scale RD&I to large-scale plants. This article takes a closer look at a representative sample of he post-communist EU members – Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, Croatia, Slovenia, Hungary and Bulgaria --to assess how well they are equipped to take advantage of these new geothermal-development opportunities from a legislative, administrative and legal point of view. The analysis necessarily applies to Renewable-energy (RE) law, a particular subset of energy law. RE relates primarily to transactional legal and policy issues involved in the development, implementation, and commercialization of such renewable-energy sources as solar, wind, geothermal and tidal.

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