Europe declared an Energy Union in 2015 with the solemnity of a founding treaty. A decade later, the concept has been hollowed out by the very national interests it was meant to transcend, leaving the continent as fragmented on energy as it was before the ink dried.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The premise was elegant: interconnect markets, diversify supply, and pool purchasing power so that no single member state could be leveraged by an external supplier. The Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 should have been the catalyst that turned aspiration into architecture. For a brief, panicked winter, it almost was. Emergency gas-sharing agreements were signed. LNG terminals were fast-tracked in Germany and the Netherlands. The Commission secured a mandate for joint procurement. Solidarity was no longer abstract \u2014 it was survival.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That solidarity lasted precisely as long as the emergency. Once wholesale prices retreated from their 2022 peaks, national energy ministries reverted to their default posture: protect domestic industry, subsidise national champions, and resist any mechanism that might require sharing cheap electrons with neighbours. France doubled down on nuclear. Germany doubled down on industrial electricity price caps funded from its own fiscal reserves. Spain capped retail prices unilaterally. Each decision was rational in isolation and collectively devastating to the idea of a common energy market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Energy Union was always a contradiction. It asked sovereign states to subordinate their most politically sensitive domestic policy \u2014 the price citizens pay to heat their homes \u2014 to supranational coordination. No treaty revision granted the Commission the authority to enforce such coordination, and no political constituency in any capital demanded it. The result is an energy landscape governed by twenty-seven competing strategies dressed up in common branding. The next supply shock will find Europe exactly where the last one did: scrambling for bilateral deals and rediscovering solidarity only when the alternative is freezing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Europe declared an Energy Union in 2015 with the solemnity of a founding treaty. A decade later, the concept has been hollowed out by the very national interests it was meant to transcend, leaving the continent as fragmented on energy as it was before the ink dried. The premise was elegant: interconnect markets, diversify supply, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"author_name":"NewEU Editorial Board","author_role":"Staff Editorial","published_date":"2025-03-22","topic_tag":"Energy Policy"},"class_list":["post-35","neweu_editorial","type-neweu_editorial","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/onyxsilk.vagabond.andreidraganescu.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/editorials\/35","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/onyxsilk.vagabond.andreidraganescu.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/editorials"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/onyxsilk.vagabond.andreidraganescu.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/neweu_editorial"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/onyxsilk.vagabond.andreidraganescu.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}