Interview: EU energy union retarded by internal divergence, geopolitical pressures: expert

The European Union was pushed to take a quicker pace toward finalizing its single energy market under Russia's pressure. However, the imbalance of energy market development and divergence of policy would challenge EU's plan, a Chinese expert on international studies said here Friday.

"EU's energy union plan faces challenges not only from internal issues, but also from Russia," Cui Hongjian, a senior research fellow at the China Institute of International Studies told Xinhua in an interview.

EU energy ministers yesterday discussed the energy union, energy infrastructure, and exchanged views on addressing particular issues such as energy security, completion of internal energy market, energy efficiency, decarbonization of the economy, and competitiveness.

The ministers would tackle in particular regional cooperation, financing of energy infrastructure and measures to end energy isolation in order to achieve the 10 percent target of existing electricity interconnections by 2020.

The European Commission (EC) yesterday said that about 100 million euros (or 111 million U.S. dollars) would be made available for projects aimed at completing the European energy market.

Commenting on the plan, Cui said the EU has pushed hard for the energy union since Ukraine crisis broke out one year ago. "New EU learders also see establishment of energy market as an important policy tool," he added.

Despite that the EU has set up special agency to coordinate different energy policies across member states, the pace of policy coordination is slow due to divergence in types of energy consumption.

Cui noted that western European countries depend on non-traditional energy such as nuclear power and solar power, while European countries close to Russia remain depending on traditional energy.

Apart from imbalanced development of energy market, another challenge in Cui's eyes for energy union is how to bring enough technological developments and capital to eastern European countries, aiming at balancing the new-energy development with western European countries.

"Moreover, there is geopolitic story behind energy policies, especially under Ukraine crisis, Russia has stopped building the South Stream pipeline which was supposed to connect Russia directly with southern and eastern Europe, casting shadow over the related European countries," Cui said.

Cui also noted that China and the EU are both big buyers in global energy market, having common interests and big influence on price fixing.

"The EU's energy union should be served as an efficient platform to deepen cooperation between China and the EU. Such a union should focus more on external negotiation and cooperation," Cui said. Endit