E3G

Energy, Climate, Democracy and the Future of Europe

By Marina Brutinel

The EU has great potential for action, but has failed to make the necessary political choices to act. The key barrier has been a failure to see the strategic importance of global climate and energy security to Europe’s future, and therefore the need to lever a much higher level of political and financial investment.

European energy policies and strategies tend to be formed in a narrow framework of perceived national interests. These seem based on a backward looking view of sovereign security which ignores the growing reality of interdependence. German energy policy is a good example of this paradox; as it has focused on securing unilateral access to Russian gas over the concerns of its European neighbours for their security. Does Germany assume that it could thrive on its own by securing access to energy resources while sitting in the middle of a European continent struggling to meet its energy needs? Member State responses to the EU Green paper showed how the initial acknowledgement of the needed for stronger common purpose became quickly eroded by narrow national views and an unwillingness to look to the long term.

However, and despite all these problems, there is no other major power with the interests, resources and potential political will to take the lead in promoting global cooperation in the area of energy and climate security. Europe needs to play this role as it not only goes to the heart of its system of values but will also help determine its future place in the international system.

The conversations E3G has held across Europe suggest that these issues, more than any other, have the potential to engage European citizens with a new sense of purpose and vision for a renewed European project. Energy and climate security and the maintenance of democracy are issues that cannot be dealt with in silos and have thus to be made central to the EU project to mobilise the scale of political and financial energy needed to drive it forward.

Generating the political energy needed to overcome these national barriers, and the institutional silos in European policy making will require a new powerful coalition of actors. Building a convergent agenda around energy and climate security, framed around its importance in the European project and to securing peace and democracy globally has the potential to animate a coalition powerful enough to drive this agenda forward. Certainly no individual policy silo has the political strength to drive these changes at the scale and pace required.