From a liberal to a strategic actor: the evolution of the EU’s approach to international energy governance

ABSTRACT

Most scholars have described the European Union (EU) as a liberal actor in its approach to international climate and energy governance. This paper argues that the EU has shifted to a strategic approach, including the use of legislation and the adoption of negotiating positions that promote a political agenda. This is illustrated through an analysis of the EU’s evolving stance on multilateral energy governance and its handling of the Nord Stream 2 project. The EU began to shift towards a strategic stance already in the 2000s, in the context of the Energy Charter Treaty negotiations and the growing securitization of European energy debates. Following the polycrisis of the mid-2010s, the EU adopted a full-fledged strategic stance on external energy policy. Geopolitical crises and great power competition, together with intra-EU divisions and an increased focus on the climate agenda, have catalyzed the EU’s shift to a strategic approach.

KEYWORDS:

• Energy Charter Treaty
• energy policy
• European Union
• governance
• multilateralism
• Nord Stream 2

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the special issue editors and the reviewers for their comments. We also acknowledge support by the Jean Monnet Network GOVTRAN – Governing the EU’s Climate and Energy Transition in Turbulent Times, with the support of the Erasmus+ programme of the European Union.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Regulatory power is defined as ‘the ability to formulate, monitor and enforce a set of market rules in a jurisdiction. Regulatory power has two essential prerequisites: a sizeable internal market and potent regulatory institutions’ (Siddi, 2018b, p. 1553).

2 In this context, ‘unbundling’ refers to the separation of ownership of energy production and transportation, hence the end of a system based on vertically integrated energy companies.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Marco Siddi

Marco Siddi is Senior Research Fellow at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs (FIIA).

Irina Kustova

Irina Kustova is Researcher at the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS) in Brussels.