EU Needs to Increase Energy Security

European Union member states should improve their ability to share energy supplies across their borders, reduce their reliance on a handful of exporting states and cut the amount of energy they use, EU leaders said at a summit on Friday,

Europe is determined to avoid repeat of what happened two years ago – to be put under discriminative conditions and to have the natural gas supply cut,” said Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borisov.

The EU is heavily dependent on climate-damaging fossil fuels, many of which it imports from Russia. It has already vowed to shift its economy away from fossil fuels by 2050, but has not yet worked out how to do so, or how to reduce its dependence on foreign suppliers.

"It is no longer possible to design energy policies in a purely national context; a European framework is needed," summit chairman Herman Van Rompuy said via Twitter during the meeting.

Historically, the EU's energy grids have been divided between national monopoly providers, with few or no links between them. There is, for example, no energy link between France and Spain, or between Poland and the Baltic States.

The EU has long tried to improve the situation, pushing member states to weaken the hold of their one-time monopolies and to boost national connections. So far, results have been patchy.

EU leaders on Friday therefore called for "major efforts ... to modernize and expand Europe's energy infrastructure and to interconnect networks across borders."

In 2006 and 2009, the EU saw its gas supplies suddenly cut in rows between Ukraine and Russia. Member states such as Bulgaria saw their fuel fall to nothing, as there were no pipelines capable of bringing in supplies from other states.

"No EU member state should remain isolated from the European gas and electricity networks after 2015 or see its energy security jeopardized by lack of the appropriate connection," leaders said.

Leaders also said that the bloc should put more effort into building pipelines to new suppliers, and in pushing Russia to act more predictably, in order to guarantee reliable supplies.

"Work should be taken forward as early as possible to develop a reliable, transparent and rules-based partnership with Russia," they said.

Diplomats said that national leaders clashed over the question of who should pay the billions of euros needed to build the new links. EU Energy Commissioner Guenther Oettinger has proposed using the EU budget to help with the funding, but Britain and Sweden oppose this.

Leaders compromised with a statement that "some projects that would be justified from a security of supply / solidarity perspective, but are unable to attract enough market-based finance, may require some limited public finance to leverage private funding."

EU Leaders also gave the first tentative indication that the EU could see shale gas as a future way to energy security.

"In order to further enhance its security of supply, Europe's potential for sustainable extraction and use of conventional and unconventional (shale gas and oil shale) fossil fuel resources should be assessed," they agreed, without saying who should do so.