Priorities of Czech Council of EU Presidency: Case study

In the 21st century the significance of the EU energy agenda has been growing constantly. The European Union tried to overcome energy crises actively by creating European Security Strategy. The energy agenda has two major parts -- energy security and climate protection. The 2009 Czech EU presidency chose as one of its priorities energy policy. In particular, it promoted support of nuclear energy, deepening of the European neighbourhood policy by creating its own project Eastern Partnership and developed a discussion about Southern Corridor and its main project gas pipeline Nabucco. The aim of this thesis is to show, whether the Czech presidency was pursuing its own national interests by promoting energy policy, or the interests of the whole Union. The structure of this thesis consists of three parts. In the first one, the Council of European Union is described, as well as its functions, possibilities of agenda setting and its evaluation. In the second part, the European energy policy is specified together with the influencing factors for choosing energy policy as one of the Czech priorities. In the last chapter, functions of the Czech presidency are examined and the presidency is evaluated according to criteria mentioned in the first chapter