While the internal energy market is approaching completion, the EU still struggles to design a coherent design for its external energy relations. This year’s events in Ukraine highlighted dramatically Europe’s vulnerability in particular in relation to hydrocarbons. Security ofsupply has been high on the agenda of European policy-makers for several years, especially in the wake of the last supply crises in 2006 and 2009. Security of supply and the emerging external energy policy are closely interrelated. Evidently both concepts are of high relevance for EU law. Security of energy supply used to be invoked by Member States against the enforcement of the fundamental freedoms in the internal market before it became one of the objectives of energy policy and triggered a string of legislative and regulatory measures on European level, including the creation of new bodies and the more vigorous promotion of infrastructure. External energy policy, on the other hand, in many respects the strategic counterpart of the strife for security of supply and hitherto a conglomeration of different measures, is increasingly “juridified” as well as “communitized’.
This book will in a systematical manner follow the manifold ramifications of European external energy law and policy, including the case law and acquis related to security of supply, project-related interventions through so-called “pipeline diplomacy’ the relevance of competition law and international climate change law for external action, natural resources law md shale gas etc. It will also analyze the EU’s bilateral international relations which countries as diverse as Russia, Ukraine or Switzerland. A particular focus will be on the law of multilateral organizations of relevance for European energy policy, such as the WTO, the Energy Charter, the European Econom ic Area and the Energy Community.
The author is Deputy Director and Head of Legal at the Secretariat ofthe Energy Community. Given the ever-closer amalgamation of European internal and external market law, and its practical consequences for policy-design, transactions and projects alike, his book will be an indispensable asset for policy-makers, academics and practitioners.
