Strengthening of Sources of Power: A Study of EU Energy Diplomacy

Abstract

The EU is a unique supranational actor in international relations. The development of the EU itself started with issues regarding energy. Through several historical steps, current energy policy is constructed. Gradually it put an importance on its external dimension. Since the Lisbon Treaty entered into force in 2009, it gave its first explicit competence as Article 194 and unveiled the objectives of EU energy policy. The EU strengthens its institutional framework of Energy Diplomacy. In 2015, the Council of the European Union decided its Action Plan for Energy Diplomacy in association with the Energy Union. Under the framework of Energy Union, which is one of the prioritized policy areas under the current presidency, the EU explicitly mentions its importance of strengthening the external dimension of energy policy. We focus on the EU’s energy infrastructure policy in order to observe strengthening of sources of power of EU Energy Diplomacy. The EU implements the Trans European Network (TEN) as its infrastructure policy. This TEN covers energy infrastructures of EU and beyond (TEN-E), and it selects prioritized projects as the Projects of Common Interest (PCIs). The EU also forms and uses an international regime, Energy Community (EnC), as a tool of its energy diplomacy and forms a PCIs’ style prioritization mechanism, the Projects of Energy Community Interests (PECIs). Our contribution would be the followings. First, the EU’s sources of energy diplomatic power would be based at least on norms, size of market, and regulations. Second, these sources of power would be strengthened a certain degree by the EU’s energy infrastructure policies. Third, this strengthening of sources of power, at least in energy sector, would have a synergy of policies, like energy policy, infrastructure policy, common foreign and security policy and so forth.