”Intelligence Brief: French Energy Policy”

French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin held an important speech on August 16, 2005. Apart from addressing his projects to tackle unemployment, he explained to citizens why the present oil crisis is destined to last and, more importantly, he briefly illustrated the new French energy policy. The importance of this speech is two-fold.

First, de Villepin is launching a strategy aimed at energy independence (involving the state’s intervention in the national economy), which appears to be in line with his Gaullist legacy. Second, he never mentioned in his speech launching a common European energy policy.

PINR