Towards a European Strategy for Energy Security? : Member States Diversity and EU Institutional Capacity

Resource poverty, poorly diversified energy imports, and a difficult relationship to its most important supplier, Russia, have brought energy security high on the European Union’s agenda. The risk exposure motivates some, but not all, EU actors to work for the development of a European Energy Security Strategy. This study is about to what extent and how member states’ differences and EU’s institutional capacity determine the development of a strong, flexible and consistent energy security strategy in the European Union. It concludes that the main difficulties are high diversity of member states’ situations and preferences, and the EU's relatively weak institutional capacity in the field