Russia, Germany and European energy policy

This conflict between national and European approaches towards Russia and Gazprom will come to a head in 2007. Germany then has the twin presidencies of the European Union and the G8. Germany will preside over the commission’s liberalisation plans, including possibly the proposal for ownership unbundling of networks within companies such as Ruhrgas, the development of the energy green paper proposals and the EU’s post-2007 PCA or other arrangements with Russia.

At the G8, it will also have to broker the US-Russian energy relationships, and in both presidencies it will need to take the climate change agenda forward. Finally, to make matters even more complex, Germany will have to prepare the ground for resolving the EU constitutional issues, which are likely to make any further shift of powers to the commission in areas such as energy even harder to sell.
[…]The worrying recent developments have opened up considerable opportunities. Recognition of the reality of Vladimir Putin’s Russia, and in particular the rational monopoly strategy that Gazprom is pursuing, should disabuse most of the notion that Russia is about to open up its gas pipes to others. Recognition, too, of what is going on in Georgia and the Caspian, and the implications for southern non-Russian pipeline supplies, should alert Europeans to the importance of European foreign policy.

To meet this series of new challenges, Europe needs more than a set of national responses, however much these might be in individual member-states’s narrow interests. That Germany is in the driving seat, both as Gazprom’s hub and with the presidencies, provides a timely chance to prepare Europe for its future energy dependency, and to better align its internal energy market reforms with the external challenge.

But at stake is much more: if Germany fails to go down the European path, it will be a break with one of the deep political objectives of the EU, and it will show the sceptical voters of Europe that the EU cannot deliver in an area of such vital interest. Energy is where a significant part of the case for greater European integration may be won or lost.

Open Democracy