The European Green Deal: a gateway to strategic energy autonomy?

  • Ottavio Quirico Perugia University for Foreigners, Italy
DOI: https://doi.org/10.18543/ced.2698
Keywords: strategic energy autonomy, spheres of influence, sovereignty, war, energy supply crisis, green transition

Abstract

The concept of “strategic autonomy” embeds the political idea of “independence” and the legal notion of “sovereignty”. As the EU largely depends for energy on foreign resources, particularly from autocratic regimes, difficult governance situations, notably wars, can deeply disrupt the Union’s energy supply. Specifically, war in Ukraine has been convincingly explained as an affirmation of the opposed development of Russia’s “sphere of influence”, whereby energy supply is used as a “weapon” to create dependency across sovereign State borders. Whereas scholars have advanced a dichotomy for the EU and its Member States to escape Russia’s sphere of influence, either diversifying energy sources or accelerating the green transition, it is argued in this paper that the two approaches should be considered complementary rather than alternative. It is therefore suggested that, at least in the short term, the EU and its Member States should seek to diversify their energy sources, whilst at the same time trying to accelerate the green transition under the Green Deal as a longer-term strategy. As the EU and its Member States should qualify as “non-belligerent” vis-à-vis Russia, necessity seems the most suitable legal justification to relinquish already contracted energy supply obligations and move to a newly balanced energy policy.

Received: 26 October 2022
Accepted: 27 January 2023

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Author Biography

Ottavio Quirico, Perugia University for Foreigners, Italy

PhD, is a Senior Researcher in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at Perugia University for Foreigners and an Associate Professor at the University of New England, Law School and Australian National University, Centre for European Studies. He is also a Visiting Professor at the University of Pisa, Political Science and has been, inter alia, a Fernand Braudel Senior Fellow in the Law Department of the European University Institute in Florence and a Marie Curie Fellow at Université Panthéon-Assas in Paris. He has taught and researched extensively in the areas of international law and relations and EU law and policy, lecturing in several universities and institutions worldwide and acting as a consultant to the United Nations.

Published
2023-04-27
How to Cite
Quirico, Ottavio. 2023. “The European Green Deal: A Gateway to Strategic Energy Autonomy?”. Deusto Journal of European Studies, no. 68 (April), 69-87. https://doi.org/10.18543/ced.2698.
Issue
No. 68 (2023)
Section
Articles

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