(In)consistency in European external energy governance in the EU's southern neighbourhood - The case of Morocco

Abstract

Energy is a strategic product cutting across a variety of domains including (geo)politics and economics, as well as climate and the environment. The achievement of a secure, affordable and sustainable energy supply is at the heart of any economy. In this context, changes in global energy markets have a decisive impact on energy politics, calling for a coherent and consistent governance approach in order to remain competitive. Yet, as for the EU, the achievement of consistency is one of its greatest challenges, notably when it comes to external policies. This is also an issue with respect to energy. In fact, recent developments in the global energy landscape and international events such as climate change increasingly involve the Union in relations of interdependence with its neighbouring countries, including those located to its south. However, whilst energy has always been a key area of cooperation in EU-southern Mediterranean relations and although the Union has long recognised the region’s potential in this regard, past efforts at building a fruitful energy relationship have been rather disappointing. This is problematic in so far as a shift in traditional energy policy cooperation in the region has been observed in recent years, mirroring deep geopolitical change. Adding to this, the perceptibility of EU energy policies in the region is overall low. Against this background, this dissertation examined policy (in)consistency in EU energy governance towards the southern Mediterranean, using Morocco as a case study. In fact, Morocco is not only the EU’s most important partner country within the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) framework but is also of utmost importance for the EU’s energy and climate interests, notably when it comes to a clean energy turnaround. Moreover, the country has long been neglected as a research subject in the literature and is therefore or academic interest. The aim of this research was to explore whether and to what extent the EU is consistent in its energy governance approach towards Morocco and to determine the reasons for consistency or inconsistency, the context in which a total of three factors have been identified, namely competencies, interests and interdependencies. To assess consistency, this research used coordination as a proxy variable for consistency, whereby, inspired by the Les Metcalfe methodology, it attempted to investigate the coordination mechanisms of the different actors involved in EU energy governance towards Morocco, including the horizontal, vertical and diagonal dimensions as well as in the EU multilevel system and at the third-country level. As one outcome of this analysis, it has transpired that coordination (and thus consistency) takes place with regard to different aspects (strategic/political or functional, i.e. when it centres around financial or technical issues). Whilst strategic/political coordination takes place mainly in the EU multilevel system, functional coordination takes place in both the EU multilevel system and at the third-country level. Another outcome is that strategic/political coordination is overall more extensive in the horizontal and diagonal dimensions, but less extensive in the intergovernmental and vertical dimensions, whereas functional coordination seems to run smoothly in all dimensions. One reason for the extensive horizontal and diagonal coordination seem to be the clear delimitation of competencies. The extensive functional coordination in the intergovernmental and vertical dimensions is due to converging energy interests across the EU institutions and member states. By contrast, the less extensive strategic/political coordination in these two dimensions can be explained by diverging policy interests as regards EU energy governance towards Morocco and interdependencies between the member states and Morocco.