The EU must create an energy union to secure its gas supply, because its current dependence on Russian energy makes Europe weak, Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk wrote in an article in the Financial Times.
Russia, which provides around one third of the EU’s oil and gas, sent shockwaves through the international community with its military intervention and annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula in March.
The action prompted the United States and its European allies to begin imposing sanctions on President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle, and to threaten to penalise key sectors of Russia’s economy if Russia escalates tensions with Ukraine.
An international agreement to avert wider conflict in Ukraine was faltering on Monday, with pro-Moscow separatist gunmen showing no sign of surrendering government buildings they seized in the east of the country.
“Regardless of how the stand-off over Ukraine develops, one lesson is clear: excessive dependence on Russian energy makes Europe weak,” Tusk wrote in the article.
He noted that the EU was creating a banking union, with a single supervisor, and a single resolution mechanism and fund to close down failing institutions.
The EU was also already jointly buying uranium for its nuclear power plants. The approach to Russian gas should be the same, he said.
“I therefore propose an energy union. It will return the European Community to its roots,” he said.
Such a union should be based on several elements, he said, the first of which would be the creation of a single European body that would buy gas for the whole 28-nation bloc.
Another would be that if one or more EU countries were threatened with being cut off from gas supplies, the others would help them through “solidarity mechanisms”. (more)
Read the whole story here: www.euractiv.com/sections/energy/poland-calls-eu-action-end-russias-energy-stranglehold-301670
Source: EurActiv