Energy

The EU’s Eastern Partnership (EaP) initiative is off to a bad start. Presented by Sweden and Poland with much fanfare in 2008 as a new forum for the EU to engage the eastern neighbourhood, its recent launch in Prague proved, on the contrary, to be a major disappointment. The list of EU leaders that decided the summit wasn’t worth their time was embarrassingly long interest and political will are clearly lacking in this new initiative. As such, the chances that the European Union will sooner or later consign the EaP to the same historical dustbin as its predecessors are high. But so are the EU’s stakes in the region.

The European Union’s energy security has been severely tested over the past year. August’s Georgian conflict underlined the possible dangers of diversification into the post-Soviet space, with bombs landing in the vicinity of several crucial gas and oil pipelines including South Caucasus and Baku-Supsa, while the Russian-Ukrainian gas stand-off sent shivers across Europe in January.

A conference on “Guaranteeing energy security of the EU Member States within the framework of the common electricity market” took place on Friday 30.1.2009 in Ostrava. It was attended by, among others, Czech PM and President of the Council of the EU Mirek Topolánek, members of the Czech, Polish and Swedish governments, and EU Commissioner for Energy Andris Piebalgs.

The conference organised by the Heinrich Böll Foundation and the Ministry of Environment provided good opportunity for exchange and debate among the climate diplomats, government officials, experts, business and NGOs representatives and interested public (over 160 participants). The main aim of the conference, the biggest of its kind in the new EU member states this year, was to assess where the EU, USA and other key players stay shortly before the Copenhagen Climate Conference (COP 15) this December. Far beyond that, three thematic workshops in the afternoon provided for an intensive expert discussions on the issues of the cost of the unabated Climate change, ways how to finance the measures against it and last but not least the economic opportunities stemming from the „green investments“ and mitigation measures.