GGP: EU External Energy Policy in Natural Gas: A Case of Neofunctionalist Integration?
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This is an excerpt from a paper originally published by the Center for European Integration Studies (ZEI) at the University of Bonn.
Historically, energy security policy has been the experimental laboratory of Neofunctionalism. As a theory which was invented by Ernst Bernard Haas, it explains the expansive spillover-logic behind the post-war creation of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) and the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom) as peace-preserving institutions, causing functional pressures for the integration of related economic sectors and the incremental pooling of political resources in a ‘high authority’. The mentioned energy institutions were established as tools, with an underlying security rationale, for the integration of Germany to prevent its unilateral military resurgence as a threat to internal peace in Europe.
The target of today’s EU energy security policies is mainly Russia. As a consequence of Russia’s de facto autocracy, political and economic integration goals are much harder to attain. Furthermore, attitudes in EU member states vary between seeking interdependence with the Kremlin and independence from it. Since the gas supply disruptions in 2006 and 2009 (‘gas crises’) and the annexation of Crimea in 2014, dependence on Russia is increasingly viewed as a vulnerability. The Energy Union Strategy, which has been adopted by EU institutions to ensure mutual solidarity in the event of a supply shortfall, is shaped by this shift in threat perceptions. It takes account of the political leverage Russia possesses as a result of supplying more than one third of total EU gas imports via its state-controlled export monopoly Gazprom (37.5 per cent in 20151 ). However, the extent to which external source diversification away from Russia should take place is a recurringly disputed theme between national capitals. It has gained center stage with the case of Nord Stream 2, the Baltic Sea pipeline between Russia and Germany.
Robert Stüwe
The statements, opinions and data contained in the content published in Global Gas Perspectives are solely those of the individual authors and contributors and not of the publisher and the editor(s) of Natural Gas World.