Abstract
Among the many problems the European Union (EU) is facing, the energy question is an important one. Climate change forces the EU to reduce the use of fossil fuel. However, security of supply of energy relies heavily on the use of fossil fuel. This creates a dilemma for EU policy. The pollution caused by gas is less than the pollution of the other fossil fuels such as coal and oil. Therefore it seems reasonable that the first reduction will take place in the use of coal and oil and later on gas. This brings us to the next problem, namely that the EU is dependent on the gas import from politically instable countries. In this chapter, we will pay attention to the reduction of the use of fossil fuel as well as to the EU policy on gas import. We give an overview of the steps that the EU has taken and shall take to realize her goals for the coming years. To secure the availability of energy the EU will face a high gas dependency for quite some time. The gas market knows a number of instable countries, which makes energy a difficult political issue. The EU has to speak with one voice. In the EU every member country has a blocking vote, which weakens the position of the EU in the negotiations with non-EU gas suppliers. An alternative is the Energy Union, where the member countries have no blocking vote but takes their decisions based on the majority of the voting countries. To operate as one block is a better position than when EU-members negotiate bilaterally.
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Notes
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Huge thanks to Mr. Szymon Polak, First Secretary, Energy Section, Permanent Representation of the Republic of Poland to the EU, for his kind comments and ideas.
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Dorsman, A.B., Nentjes, A., Polak, P. (2018). Geostrategy of the European Union in Energy. In: Dorsman, A., Ediger, V., Karan, M. (eds) Energy Economy, Finance and Geostrategy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76867-0_10
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