<TITLE: 5th Symposium of Russian and East European Studies: Workshop on EU, Russia and the Politics of Northern Energy Resources
ACADEMIC DOMAIN: social sciences
DISCIPLINE: Russian studies
EVENT TYPE: conference presentation
FILE ID: CPRE07C
NOTES: continuation of and continued in CDIS070, session also includes presentations CPRE07A-B

RECORDING DURATION: 16 min 9 sec

RECORDING DATE: 17.3.2005

NUMBER OF PARTICIPANTS: 15

NUMBER OF SPEAKERS: 1

S5: NATIVE-SPEAKER STATUS: German; ACADEMIC ROLE: junior staff; GENDER: female; AGE: 31-50>


<S5> thank you my paper is on the role of germany within the EU er russia energy dialogue and i erm will <FOREIGN> ja </FOREIGN> also more or less focus on my er conception of the paper and would like to introduce to you my two hypotheses rather than just t- talking about my empirical results which i don't have that mo- at that moment because we are just in a very early stage of this working project so my paper is built around two hypotheses and the first is that the EU russian energy relationship is important for the development of the international political economy of the energy and the policy approaches to govern international energy relations , and this development erm is split over two approaches erm between one approach is multilateral governance institution and market institutions and the other one which i would name more geopolitical approach and my second hypothesis is that this split is also reflected somehow at the EU regional level , and germany as one of the biggest members of course of the EU as the entrance gate for russian energy flows and also as so-called engine of erm european integration has from my point of view a decisive role to play in which direction the EU energy policies will go , erm let me say something more about these two approaches to govern energy flows i (that) are referring to <NAME>'s study that has convincingly argued that international political economy of oil and gas is a deci- at a decisive erm turning point , and i myself use this <SIC> dichotonomy </SIC> of the two somewhat competing and contradicting approaches to further develop and modify this analytical scheme and especially using erm the first approach under terms of multilateral government because this is of course very important within the european union but also in the broader space with russia multilateral governance , the first approach they call it market and institutions and they say under the market and institutions storyline it is assumed that there is a continuation and intesi- intensification of the current internationalisation of markets that means globalisation of international energy markets and enduring cooperation in the international political and economic institutions leading to the continued evolution of the multilateral system that governs international energy relations first of all i'm talking about energy charter treaty could be one example of such an approach and the second approach they call it regions and empires and in this er storyline or in this path development the world is broken up into more or less integrated political blocks with satellite regions that compete for market and resources with other blocks so erm this is my first approach saying we have these two open erm development paths and i then look erm what is the role of germany linking up to the EU level and then to the level of EU bilateral erm relations with russia and what is important to see and i it i can just very briefly touch on this is that there are key differences in these two approaches and i think the first key difference in this it had been already touched also by my colleagues is the specific relationship between state and market what do you have , whether you see states or markets at the main as the main device coordinating international energy flows so this is very very important as erm one erm difference erm this question of course is closely related to the international political economy as such the transformation of the role of the state liberalisation in in energy markets liberalisation is still an issue at the EU level if you talk about energy policies then the second difference erm is the scope of the arrangements whether you have just bilateral arrangements or whether you have regional arrangements or even global arrangements and it's not only the scope in geographical terms but the othe- third difference i would like to mention is also the scope in in themes and issues whether you really integrate other issues such as environmental issues whether you integrate the rule of law or something within these erm relations then it really means that you have a further development of deepening integration or some spill-over effects possible spill-over effects , of course erm i would say in the last years erm we have seen a trend for further towards the geopolitical approach erm and what i'm trying then in analysing the german role is that i'm first erm trying to identify what are the main argumentation lines followed by the main actors involved in defining german energy policies also transferring it to EU level and then repeating it in the EU russian energy dialogue and then looking whether these erm leads into coherent policies or whether we have a a mixture of policies and then whether this leads of course into setting of institutions which would then say and give us the direction either into geopolitical approach or a multilateral approach or maybe this splits over policy fields this is i think it's very probable development what we have , erm let me just briefly touch on on the german issue i mean it's very interesting that with the gerhard schröder government even though he criticised chancellor kohl very much for his sauna diplomacy as he called it with yeltsin i mean we have at the moment really a cultivating in germany of friendship with putin and it's really that it's schröder is saying very much it's it's it's personal relationship which is really securing energy supply from russia to germany that he is even talking about putin as a perfect democrat he has been criticised a lot on this issue of course he is also talking about personal trust he's say- he was saying i can quote him or one thing that he said i had never had an incentive to mistrust putin and he's also ar- arguing if if you look just at his erm argumentation it is more or less er er an argumentation saying russia is indispensable for german energy security and especially because there is no alternative if you look to the middle east it's even more <SIC> instable </SIC> than russia so this is the main argumentation line and what is interesting erm is to say what is what is going on especially in the last year when you look at the rising oil prices there is a pressure from the foundation or the union of erm german industrialists to really find new approaches to energy security and schröder is always saying well our our ways our way to secure energy supply to germany is a an even privileged access of german enterprises to the russian market and this is from my point of view very interesting if you compare it to the two development paths because he's not talking about multilateral liberalisation which would w- well establish pr- rul- er rules for a playing game for example for everybody but he's really talking about a privileged access of energy companies from germany so this is interesting what i'm then trying to do is i'm looking at the history , well or just i could give you some figures i mean of course there is a truth in it i mean m- my colleagues already mentioned the high bulk of energy resources in russia and at the moment erm germany is im- importing a share of 31 per cent of oil from russia and 38 per cent of gas from russia so this is very high it exceeds even the level of 30 per cent which has been once mentioned as critical by the (G7) and enforced by the E- EU but what i'm doing then is to look at the history of relationship to see whether w- well this this erm schröder approach reflects and how a tradition builds upon long-standing relations or whether this is really er er not a continuation but a new break and what is interesting and a- again it's just an hypothesis what we can see is that there is a long tradition of erm german-russian energy supplies (enough) stable er energy supplies from the 70s they were started under the <FOREIGN> ostpolitik </FOREIGN> of erm willy brandt and again this already established state-to-state contact and already established erm i'm talking about guest deliveries because i saw it of west western germany erm and this again already established a very close relationship between the entercom- erm en- energy company ruhrgas with the then gazprom the gas ministry so i think this is an important factor in in this overall approach , erm what is and what i'm i'm mentioning then and my colleagues mentioned it already is this erm re-nationalisation of erm the russian ent- ent- enterprises and the role germany played and i would say it was a role of be- keeping silence or even erm a benevolent role of of german banks thinking maybe about financing gazprom to to buy yuganskneftegaz and schröder has also been and german banks ha- have also been criticised for example by the US for this attitude so this is an an interesting development what i try to analyse then , and of course erm this has to be put erm into a broader context o- er even if you talk about the northern dimension what we are focusing on but also of the re-thinking how how huge is the share and will be the share and that's what you said also to look erm how can this be embedded in the overall energy policies because on the one hand we have a really concentration of schröder on on energy deliveries from russia but on the other hand of course we have with this government of the coalition between the social democratic party and the greens there is of course a great lobbying for renewables to erm a- achieving more energy security by a a more erm well spread energy mix with renewable energies and new resources for example and this is important to see how and then i turn to the interest groups in in in germany erm how they erm behave in in this mixture of energy policies and to look how E.ON for example E.ON ruhrgas <FOREIGN> R-B-E </FOREIGN> how they behave because they have really very much opposed also this erm environmentalist approach of the greens so this is very important it's also important what i then erm look at erm is that very strategically german enterprises entered for example the in the eastern european markets and especially the transit countries so we have erm a strategic approach also erm if you look at the transit question which is of course very interesting and it's very interesting for our northern dimension that erm there is a lot of engagement within that transit countries possible transit countries but also in russia itself because of course E.ON ruhrgas has with its 6.5 per cent share of gazprom er a real privileged access to russian market so this is what i'm doing then and then i'm trying to link erm these identifications of argumentation lines and possible policy approaches to the EU level and comparing this approach which i would call it a <SIC> combine </SIC> between really an approach to erm make a a demand policy that means to really look on in on energy efficiency but also on rising shares of renewable energies within the energy mix on the one hand but also trying to really establish exclusive ties with russia as the main er producer and and and supplier of energy to the european markets so we have a real mixture and this is erm important when you look then erm how does this link up with the discourses or or the storylines the developments on the EU level and i think erm it it links up with the question erm of strengthening environmental and climate policies of course but it is erm still a question whether really erm (a pooling) and transferring of sovereignty which is still an issue if you think about EU energy policies the question of transferring competence to EU level in energy policies as such i mean we have with the european constitution now the first step that we have real energy chapter in within the constitution but this is the real first step the member states have done and we still see if you analyse the whole process of the constitution there was this a huge reluctance for example in great britain and the netherlands because they feared about the sovereignty over natural resources so this is still a question and this this might be interesting how how this will develop er in the future and of course if this trend goes further that germany more successfully also er searches for an access to the russian energy market what this does this mean for the concept of diversification what you really have at the european union level what does this mean for example about projects of linking energy erm corridors through turkey or the nabuko project through iran or w- with er the question of the whole caspian region this would really question mark for example northern gas pipeline project which are now under discussion and especially have been under discussion within the working meeting be- between russia and er germany and russian and german enterprises , i'm looking at the time because i wanted to to be very brief erm so far i can just give you some preliminary conclusions er that i have at the moment and i think that you have a trend of er german i would call it geo-economic for (xx) as i repeated several times the position of german enterprises in russia and especially erm also an influence over the transit corridors which would again erm be in favour for this nordic erm gas pipeline and this is very much this this approach is very much prevailing over political concerns it means we have really primacy of economics over politics and then over human rights concerns or whatever and on the other hand erm what i said a- already before er germany is acting twofold it's it's on the one hand backing a multilateral approach especially in policy fields such as climate policy environmental policies and also strengthening of the common security in foreign policy which i perceive is very important for a common energy policy of the EU but on the other hand you have somehow i i i it's a question whether it's a fallback on second-best strategy but at least we have a strategy of really pushing stronger energy companies erm towards erm er t- t- er to the access to russia and this would also mean a pursuit of german particular and and national interests so to say so this would also mean if if this approach erm is really prevailing this would also be in favour for the nordic gas pipeline for example , okay </S5>
