Eu Energy Policy Vis A Vis Russia

The concept of “security of supply” has been evolving over time and received a new signifi-cance since Russia, the European Union's main energy supplier, suspended gas deliveries to Europe on numerous occasions in 2006 and 2009. This has revealed an extreme dependency of the EU on Russian energy supplies. In order to be able to secure its energy suppliers, the EU's authorities are struggling to implement a common energy strategy, which would permit the EU to have a coordinated, coherent approach towards Russia, and thus, would allow the EU to be a strong actor on the international energy arena with a great bargaining power and an ability to impose its conditions. In this thesis I demonstrate that the different bilateral strategies of EU countries towards Russia are hindering the establishment of such an ap-proach. Through the examples of divergent external energy policies of Germany and Poland, I stress the lack of coordination and solidarity of the EU Member States in the field of energy policy, and show that the EU still has a long way to go before establishing a common energy policy.