This study traces the activities of the European Commission in the natural gas sector from 1990 to 2016, by concentrating on market liberalisation and infrastructure development as the main pillars of the European gas security architecture. By building on previous literature, the Commission's policymaking is analysed along its formal and informal powers in different energy security environments. In order to get a better understanding of the European energy market context, the reader is introduced into the historical development of the European energy policy in Chapter 2 and the literature on the European Union policymaking in Chapter 3. The analysis of the Commission's activities in the liberalisation (Chapter 4) and infrastructure (Chapter 5) sectors suggests that the Commission was able to effectively utilise networked governance during times when the demand for coordinated energy policies was low. This book will be of particular interest to those in the field of energy policies as well as EU policymaking.

Is the EU on the right track to meet its stated objective: a true European energy security policy? Is the current architecture, on which the EU gas security-of-supply policy is built, able to deliver the responses necessary in order to meet the growing risks and the changing realities faced by EU gas security? How should European institutions and regulations adapt and respond? What tools are available to secure the gas supply? This book feeds these questions by taking stock of today's EU gas security-of-supply governance. It is based on the four-tier program - 'A New EU Gas Security of Supply Architecture' - organized by the Loyola de Palacio Chair, together with the Clingendael International Energy Program, the Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei, and Wilton Park Conferences that took place in 2011/2012.

In this new Brookings Marshall Paper, Michael O'Hanlon argues that now is the time for Western nations to negotiate a new security architecture for neutral countries in eastern Europe to stabilize the region and reduce the risks of war with Russia. He believes NATO expansion has gone far enough. The core concept of this new security architecture would be one of permanent neutrality. The countries in question collectively make a broken-up arc, from Europe's far north to its south: Finland and Sweden; Ukraine, Moldova, and Belarus; Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan; and finally Cyprus plus Serbia, as well as possibly several other Balkan states. Discussion on the new framework should begin within NATO, followed by deliberation with the neutral countries themselves, and then formal negotiations with Russia. The new security architecture would require that Russia, like NATO, commit to help uphold the security of Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, and other states in the region. Russia would have to withdraw its troops from those countries in a verifiable manner; after that, corresponding sanctions on Russia would be lifted. The neutral countries would retain their rights to participate in multilateral security operations on a scale comparable to what has been the case in the past, including even those operations that might be led by NATO. They could think of and describe themselves as Western states (or anything else, for that matter). If the European Union and they so wished in the future, they could join the EU. They would have complete sovereignty and self-determination in every sense of the word. But NATO would decide not to invite them into the alliance as members. Ideally, these nations would endorse and promote this concept themselves as a more practical way to ensure their security than the current situation or any other plausible alternative.

This edited collection highlights the different meanings that have been attached to the notion of energy security and how it is taken to refer to different objects. Official policy definitions of energy security are broadly similar across countries and emphasize the reliability and affordability of access to sufficient energy resources for a community to uphold its normal economic and social functions. However, perceptions of energy security vary between states causing different actions to be taken, both in international relations and in domestic politics. Energy Security in Europe moves the policy debates on energy security beyond a consideration of its seemingly objective nature. It also provides a series of contributions that shed light on the conditions under which similar material factors are met with very different energy security policies and divergent discourses across Europe. Furthermore, it problematizes established notions prevalent in energy security studies, such as whether energy security is ‘geopolitical’, and an element of high politics, or purely ‘economic’, and should be left for the markets to regulate. This book will be of particular relevance to students and academics in the fields of energy studies and political science seeking to understand the divergence in perspectives and understandings of energy security challenges between EU member states and in multilateral relationships between the EU as a whole.

The global, regional, and local energy landscape has changed dramatically in the twenty-first century. Many factors have affected what we know about energy: a consensus among scientists on climate change and related support for renewable energy, evolving energy and resource extraction technologies, growing resource demand in the developing world, new regional and global energy governance actors, new major fossil fuel discoveries on land and underwater in states that have previously been under-resourced, rising interest in corporate social responsibility in energy companies, and the need for energy justice. The Oxford Handbook of Energy Politics synthesizes the diverse literature on these topics to provide a foundational resource for teaching and research on critical energy issues in international relations and comparative politics. Through chapters authored by both scholars and practitioners, the Handbook further develops the energy politics scholarship and community, and generates sophisticated new work that will benefit all who work on energy issues.

Sandu-Daniel Kopp investigates whether carbon reduction targets are compatible with market-driven competition in gas (and power) industries, and whether security of supply is compatible with competitive markets. He examines the policy trade-offs which need to be made between the three different elements, and whether these policy judgements should be economically or politically based. The analysis shows the need for a complex set of politically determined options to protect (competitive) markets from price risks and emergency events and demonstrates that this has thus far failed the policy test. Overall, the author argues that the three major elements of EU energy policy are incompatible in important respects and thereby challenges much of the conventional wisdom of EU and Member State policies of the past decade.

Distinctive due to explicit and systematically developed links between international relations (IR) and related disciplines, this book addresses global and regional interactions and the complex policy problems that often characterise this agenda. Such enhanced communication is crucial for improving the capacity of IR to engage with concrete issues that today are of high policy relevance for international organisations, states, diplomats, mediators and humankind in general. Whilst the authors do not reject the present IR, they offer a wider research agenda with new directions intended not only for those IR scholars who are unsatisfied with the analytical power of the current discipline, but also for those working on 'international', 'foreign', 'global' or 'interregional' issues in other disciplines and fields of research. In this instance they pay particular attention to linking up with peace research, international political economy (IPE) and cultural political economy (CPE), sociology, political geography, development studies, linguistics, cultural studies, environmental studies and energy research, gender studies, and traditions of area studies.

This book examines Russia’s external security policy under the presidencies of Vladimir Putin, Dmitry Medvedev and beyond. The Russian Federation has developed from a neglected regional power into a self-declared resurgent superpower. Russia’s background in the former Soviet Union as well as close ties with the upcoming new powers of China and India served as spring-boards towards regaining an influential status in the world. Simultaneously, Moscow developed an assertive policy towards the West and unwilling neighbours, culminating in August 2008 in an armed conflict with Georgia. Reviewing this decade of Russian international security policy, this work analyses security documents, military reforms and policy actions towards friends and foes, such as the USA and NATO, to provide an assessment of the future security stance of the Kremlin. This book will be of much interest to students of Russian politics and foreign policy, European politics and Security Studies and IR in general.

Over the last decades, the European gas industry has experienced extraordinary success. A strongly interconnected network of gas pipelines has been developed inside and around Europe, and the liquefied natural gas (LNG) trade has also expanded rapidly. However, the European gas industry is now facing a number of new challenges and opportunities, related to both its demand and supply sides. On the demand side, the ambitious EU de-carbonization targets have led to an unprecedented uncertainty of the EU future gas demand. In fact, the implementation of a climate-based energy policy in Europe challenges the role of natural gas in the long-term European energy mix. Also, natural gas could play an important and cost effective role in the transition towards a low carbon economy. On the supply side, new natural gas supplies are emerging around the world, mainly because of an increase in the global LNG supply and the shale gas revolution in the US. This unprecedented shift in the supply/demand balance is creating new dynamics also in the European gas industry, regarding both the EU security of gas supply architecture and the EU gas pricing mechanism. This book provides a comprehensive analysis of all these challenges and opportunities affecting the European gas industry, providing a clear snapshot of a market characterized by growing uncertainty and volatility. (Series: European Energy Studies - Vol. 6)

The Caspian Sea and the Eastern Mediterranean are two regions with abundant energy resources. Their gas routes to Europe intersect and actors, exporters, pipeline owners and operators, transit states and downstream customers are connected to one another in a web of political and economic interdependencies. More significantly, these regions have been plagued by deep-seated ethnic conflicts and disputes: namely, the two oldest registered in the United Nations (the Cyprus and the Arab-Israeli Conflicts), the Nagorno-Karabakh problem, the Syria War and numerous tensions in the Eastern Mediterranean, the Caspian Sea and the Balkan regions. This book investigates what impact these energy resources have had on the respective conflicts and disputes, as well as their influence on the power game between the EU and Russia.