EUROPE’S ENERGY POLICY: ECONOMICS, ETHICS, GEOPOLITICS
Richard Youngs
Open Democracy, UK
Jan 10 2007
A European Union dependent on energy supplies from states that violate
human-rights norms must not abandon principle to self-interest,
says Richard Youngs.
The European commission’s energy green paper published on 8 March
2006 promised a "better integration" of energy objectives into the
European Union’s foreign and security policies. But, as the commission
publishes its strategic energy review ten months later, on 10 January
2007, the EU’s approach to the foreign-policy dimension of energy
security continues to be unduly narrow and short-termist.
Indeed, the EU’s current policies sit so uneasily with the union’s
commitment to uphold democratic values that they risk undermining the
stronger aspects of its international identity – and thus actually
working against its own long-term interests.
Rivalry and responsibility
The 2006 green paper explicitly promised that energy imperatives would
not lead the EU to dilute its focus on human rights and democracy in
producer-states. In some cases at least, a number of member-states
can be commended for having stuck to this principled position towards
energy-rich regimes. A minority group of member-states has met with
Russian opposition groups; funded new human-rights and rule-of-law
projects in Iran; blocked attempts to water down human-rights
conditionality in relation to Turkmenistan; rebuffed Nursultan
Nazarbayev’s push for Kazakhstan to be granted the OSCE chair; and
criticised Olusegun Obasanjo’s unconstitutional bid for a third term
in office in Nigeria.
But the overall dynamics of EU energy strategy have been dominated
by the propensity of member-states to "break ranks" and conclude
bilateral deals that undermine both values-based foreign policy
and European unity. Germany’s relations with Russia are merely the
most high-profile instance of this trend (see Dieter Helm, "Russia,
Germany and European energy policy", 14 December 2006); Germany,
France, Italy, Austria, the Netherlands and Bulgaria too have sown
up their own agreements with Gazprom.
National rivalries look increasingly fierce in central Asia, with
European governments racing to ingratiate themselves with the region’s
autocratic leaders in the hope of winning lucrative oil-and-gas
deals. Against the backdrop of brutal crackdowns against opposition
groups in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, a number of European governments
have courted these two regimes with bilateral economic partnerships,
and both have been offered additional EU aid. Moreover, governments’
race to conclude investment deals with Muammar Gaddafi has rendered
meaningless the human-rights standards attached to the European
Neighbourhood Policy with which the EU seeks to entice Libya.
As a result of these developments, Javier Solana, the EU’s high
representative for foreign policy, admitted at an EU energy conference
in November 2006 that "the scramble for energy … risks becoming
pretty unprincipled". The record certainly ridicules the claim made
at the same event by commission president Jose Manuel Barroso that a
"quick revolution" has occurred, where member-states have surrendered
their "nationally-centred approaches".
Some of the bigger EU states still appear unconvinced in practice
that a common European approach to energy security will benefit them.
Yet a resolute focus on human rights and democracy would not mean
the subjugation of hard-nosed energy interests by naïve idealism.
Richard Youngs is co-director and coordinator of the democratisation
programme at the Fundacion para las Relaciones Internacionales y el
Dialogo Exterior (Fride)
A phantom trade-off
The drawbacks of current European policies have become increasingly
clear. The squeeze placed on European oil companies in Russia is
part of the general weakening of the rule of law witnessed under
Vladimir Putin. In halting a number of concluded deals with foreign
oil companies, there are recent signs that the Kazakh government may
be following suit. In addition, President Nazarbayev has used the
country’s national oil fund as an instrument of political clientilism,
limiting the resources available to enhance long-term production
capacity.
European investors complain about rising levels of corruption in
Azerbaijan, where experts see a connection between the patronage
governing oil funds and the possible reigniting of the Nagorno-Karabakh
conflict with Armenia. And in Nigeria, a self-serving political
elite has undermined fair and accountable government, which has in
turn intensified conflict and attacks on oil installations in the
Niger delta.
In the middle east, regimes lacking democratic legitimacy have
sought to garner popular support by restricting access for foreign
investors. Algeria reversed energy-liberalisation plans in July 2006,
with a beleaguered Abdulaziz Bouteflika looking to buy support from
domestic "oil clans". In Saudi Arabia, it is widely suspected that
security forces have been complicit in terrorist attacks on oil
installations (see Paul Rogers, "Abqaiq’s message to Washington",
9 November 2006).
The fear is often expressed that if Islamists won democratic elections
in the middle east they would cut energy links to the west; but such
charges are not based on well-grounded evidence or argument.
While some Islamists have advocated reducing levels of oil production,
others have argued that energy income will be vital for funding
Islamists’ commitments to social programmes.
At least one diplomat (speaking off the record) acknowledges that the
EU has not begun to think through the relationship between energy
supplies and the political elements of its middle-east policy, as
European governments appear content "to just keep buying the oil"
to cover short-term needs.
These examples highlight how a lack of democratic consolidation rarely
provides a trade-off gain in "stability" and predictability.
Democracy of course brings risks and is never a fail-safe panacea.
But it can assist in the development of more rules-based government
and social inclusiveness – improvements much needed if the requisite
investment is to flow into producer-states to boost productive capacity
in oil and gas.
Between economics and geopolitics
European governments are in error, then, if they think that over the
long term, stability and democracy are mutually exclusive. Indeed,
Britain’s Joint Energy Security of Supply working group report of April
2006 explicitly recognised the link between the security of energy
supplies into Europe and "democratic reform in key producer countries".
The EU has agreed new strategic partnerships with a number of
producer-states that do intensify cooperation on governance issues.
But such cooperation has been narrowly focused on energy-specific
regulatory harmonisation. The EU must gradually broaden this
technical focus into one that seeks to address the broader politics
of oil in producer-states. A policy based solely on extending the
reach of the EU’s internal market cannot suffice for durable energy
security. European policies are still driven by a cabal of energy
technocrats that seems oblivious to such wider political linkages.
The EU should work towards a distinctive European approach, one that
extends market principles within the scope of strategic agreements
that also work to further political modernisation. Potentially, such
an approach can combine both market integration and the geopolitical
realities of energy security. It could even become the EU’s valuable
contribution to advancing approaches to energy security, by rejecting
both untrammelled free-market models and purely bilateral deal-based
geopolitics. To act at this interface between economics and geopolitics
could and should be an EU strong point.
The European Union rightly rejects the "militarisation" of energy
security – which many experts detect in the evolution of United
States policies. But European governments are themselves failing
to address the underlying requisites for energy security. The EU’s
own international influence has long been subject to a paradox: the
organisation has built up influence as a symbol of certain norms and
values and this has often proved the source of its ("soft") power in
contradistinction to instrumental US-style ("hard") power politics.
If European governments jettison such values in pursuit of a more
instrumental form of energy-oriented strategic power, they could
ironically endanger the foundations of the modest influence that the
EU still enjoys.
–Boundary_(ID_WOug8g2dRbBsmKFMZ4kvFg)–