Stephan de Spiegeleire, Senior Researcher, the Hague Center for Strategic Studies, the Netherlands

What I have taken away from the discussions yesterday and today, there are two main points. That it seems to be a general consensus that the current problems in the realm of the energy security are quite daunting. We have talked about concerns; we have talked about Russia’s present central role in this area, in these definitions of concern. A lot of other issues do as well, but Russia seems to be a very central and also the fact that, when you strip all the official presentations that we’ve heard, from the sort of diplomatic niceties, we’ve only had official presentations so far. So, when you strip them, you still see that underlining consensus is quite fragile.

I mean the divergent priorities; there are very few common priorities. So, you get a pretty dim view of the security and energy problem. And in this panel particularly, we get the idea that there should be institutional solutions to the problem. I will try to suggest in the few minutes I have that I disagree with both of these premises. From my point of view, the energy security of Europe, of Western Europe has hardly been as bright as it is turning out to be today. And I will try to explain to you quickly why. And I also don’t think that institutional solutions are going to get us out of it. A few points on the optimism that I see: I see four main reasons for that. I’ll just point them out because I have no time to develop them. The first thing is, of course, the price mechanism, which is one of these great on-song heroes of conflict prevention and resolution. If you read the reports of the IEA for a long time, they have been crying about the incredible lack of investment in this area. Abundance has been the problem. Not so much scarcity. We have behaved cavalierly and responsibly in terms of security and now you so to say see the catch up of the price mechanism which is starting to play that role.

Secondly, policy, uncharacteristically, maybe, a policy seems to be helping is here. I mean, Russia, maybe, more characteristically, and it’s too bad we didn’t have Russian representative here on the panel, but still it seems to be particularly good at sort of killing the hen that lays the Faberge eggs. They basically are shooting themselves in the foot by raising this issue to a level of policy tension, which the West would not have had without this Russian plotting. So, price mechanism, policy focus, also the current crisis, the financial crisis, which we have already seen around this. And economic crisis which is certainly, according to the IMF report, so recently is going to be very big deal. It’s pushing us into what some are calling a grim new deal, whereby governments all across the world are all of a sudden grasping the opportunity in this crisis to come up with new novel solutions. I make no mistake about the extent of this and we have not talked about. If you look at it, the newly-elected President of the US is going to, wants to spend $150 billion over the next 10 years on clean energy. And according to the IEA, the current investment in this area is $10 billion per year. So, the US alone is going to outspend all of us over the next 10 years. The same is happening in UK, where Gordon Brown, has certainly seized this opportunity, France is playing the leading role and Germany. There is a lot of money in this area. So, all of a sudden, the policy focus that comes with the financial economic crisis, I think is making the likely sort of solutions much better, contrary to what we have heard today. And it’s not an institutional one; it’s the sort of a bottom-up one. Finally, of course: technology, – which we have not talked much about today. If you combine the nanno-technological revolution which is continuing in full swing with solar, you know, the prospects here are quite bright as well. And I think policy-makers tend to underestimate the incredibly accelerating pace of changing technology, which will make a lot of discussions we have today obsolete in a relatively short period of time. So, contrary to what we’ve heard I do not share the sort of gloom and doom on energy security and for the reasons I’ve pointed out I think that it looks a lot better.

But I think the focus here is what I’ve taken away from discussion also today is not the institutional solutions to this issue but the real players here, the national actors who are making policy choices with respect to their mix, with respect to the external behavior as well. And I would welcome that. I mean people in the EU would say about re-nationalization, what we’ve heard about as well, is a danger for us. I would understand, you know, there are a lot of positive elements to this. Because let’s not forget the real money in this area is not in the international institutions, they are pretty poor, pretty all of them. It’s the member states who have the money. It’s the member states who have the democratic legitimacy. We sometimes forget about that in the energy discussions. But security is about people. It’s not about security of nations. I mean, what security is about to guarantee that people in our respective countries can sort of live normal life protected from some threats out there. The democratic legitimacy does not lie with international institutions, it does not lie, unfortunately, with the EU, and really lies with the member states; and it’s also the member states that make the portfolio decisions about which international institution to endow with the capability to deal with all issues that have to be dealt with on the higher level.

A couple of quick points on both the EU and the Energy Charter: What we have not talked about so far in the EU and I think it’s a point that bears mentioning: is there incredible change in the balance of power between the Commission and the Council, which we see in a lot of policy areas and also in the energy field. I think it’s an important one. It will come to no surprise to you that I would suggest and some of that may even be encouraged. On first pillar issues, of course, is that the EU is continuing its phenomenal role, on non-first pillar issues it’s still a weak player, and is still becoming weaker and weaker because of divergences that we see from day to day. And my personal point of view is that this is not necessarily a step backwards. I mean those of us, who still believe in the EU, sometimes have these views that it always has to go in a linear way upwards. I think subsidiarity the main idea that problems have to be solved at the level at which they are best tackled has that in the industrial age has really pushed for a very heavy institutional solutions to some of these issues. And the Commission certainly has embodied that. It would seem to me that in the current age there may be other solutions to that, especially in the period of deep uncertainty. So, subsidiarity, I think, is not a static concept, this is a dynamic concept, and it may be a non-linear concept. If we get a local energy production, maybe not now, maybe in 10 years, maybe in 15 years, the very concept of subsidiarity will certainly change downwards and not upwards. These things might vary over the time. I think it’s important to bear it in mind.

A quick comment on the solidarity in the Lisbon Treaty which was mentioned here a couple of times. I come from a defense background, and I just would like to point out to you that the solidarity clauses that we have are frequently quite brittle. We even see that in NATO, I mean – ask the Turks about NATO Article 5. So, writing solidarity in a treaty does not necessarily guarantee that the incentive structure of actors will change and that they will behave accordingly. And we have plenty of evidence for that in the last decade in the defense field.

The final point is on the Energy Charter. And that’s a little bit my own personal frustration with the institutional fetishism that we often have when we talk about security issues. It seems to me that the Energy Charter is useful for those countries who want to play ball. So, the problems that we’ve already solved in the essence, you know, the value-added of these kinds of institutional arrangements are quite enormous. I personally still question why we need so much sector-specific rules of the game, and why we could not have encompassed these in the broader frameworks. But, nevertheless, that’s a useful point to make. But I do not think right now it helps us with some of the issues for the countries who don’t want to play ball. So, I do not necessarily agree with the sort of 10 years of the consensus that has emerged so far but I hope we’ll have room for discussion about that.

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