Abstract
This chapter addresses two questions. Firstly, judging from the growing regulatory pressure on Gazprom, has the EU really become liberal mercantilist, or is it still just liberal? Secondly, how can Gazprom respond to the pressure? The chapter finds that the EU has become far more systematic and salient in its measures to handle Gazprom, but that it is methodologically difficult to say, on the basis of this case alone, whether the regulatory tightening amounts to a new liberal mercantilist stance or not. The chapter lays out several avenues that Gazprom has followed or could follow in response to the EU and concludes that the best approach for Gazprom would be to adapt to EU market liberalization rather than fighting it—which it is increasingly doing.
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Acknowledgements
This chapter is based on research carried out as part of the RusChange project, financed by the Petrosam II programme of the Research Council of Norway. All translations from Russian to English are the author’s own. Thanks to Vassily Lakhonin, Tatyana Dzhiganshina and Alesia Prachakova for help with literature and data for the chapter; and to Svein S. Andersen, Julia Loe and Arild Moe for comments on the chapter. The contents and any errors remain the responsibility of the author alone.
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Overland, I. (2017). The Hunter Becomes the Hunted: Gazprom Encounters EU Regulation. In: Andersen, S., Goldthau, A., Sitter, N. (eds) Energy Union. International Political Economy Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59104-3_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59104-3_7
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