Why Can Russia “Divide and Rule” Central and Eastern Europe in Energy Policy?
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
The copyright to this article is transferred to the University of Public Service Budapest, Hungary (for U.S. government employees: to the extent transferable) effective if and when the article is accepted for publication. The copyright transfer covers the exclusive right to reproduce and distribute the article, including reprints, translations, photographic reproductions, microform, electronic form (offline, online) or any other reproductions of similar nature.
The author warrants that this contribution is original and that he/she has full power to make this grant. The author signs for and accepts responsibility for releasing this material on behalf of any and all co-authors.
An author may make an article published by University of Public Service available on a personal home page provided the source of the published article is cited and University of Public Service is mentioned as copyright holder
Abstract
The strategic challenge of the dependence of Central European countries in terms of hydrocarbon import, specifically natural gas, has not been resolved in the past 25 years. Despite repeated calls for joint action – developing common policies, designing joint frameworks, supporting the launch of major European energy infrastructure projects together – 25 years after the change of regime period the region still stands vulnerable to Russian economic penetration and political influence stemming from our large-scale dependence on Russian gas import. The paper investigates the roots and causes of this deficiency in order to answer the question: “Why and how can Russia still ‘Divide and Rule’ Central-Eastern Europe in energy policy?” Since we have witnessed the failure of the Nabucco and Southern Stream pipeline projects in recent years, facing the current challenges of the Ukraine crisis, making transit unpredictable, and perceiving a certain dissent among the Visegrád Four (V4) in this regard, the paper is to identify the particular interests and negotiation techniques of the parties in order to explain the reasons of failure.