EU Dependence on Russian Energy

Abstract

Goods and influence travel between the Russia and the collective economic area demarcated by the 27 member states of the European Union (EU), so if the latter were asymmetrically and totally dependent on Russia, analysis of the geopolitics of EU–Russian interactions would be simple. However, the particular nature of their mutual energy trade (or their ‘money-for-energy’ exchange) has clearly advantaged Russia over the EU at saliently critical times, as in January 2006 and 2009, when Russia’s dominant gas-producing and exporting firm Gazprom halted the flow of gas to Ukraine, which in turn stopped feeding the Europe-bound transit pipeline. Moreover, a considerable heterogeneity marks EU member states’ respective patterns of fuel importation and thus shapes their disparate views on the best way to deal with Russian and other energy exporters. Analysing this heterogeneity is tractable, however, due to a salient divide between the EU15 core, elements of which prefer direct channels of access to Russian gas, and the newer EU10 (now EU12) members, some of which serve as transit states and have thus expressed concern that these projects could elevate the risks of flow manipulation inhering in their near-absolute dependency on Russian fuel sources.