The European People’s Party’s effort to push EU institutions to cooperate more closely on energy diplomacy is creating friction between MEPs from western and central and eastern Europe, who are divided over how to reduce dependency on Russian gas.
The European Parliament's largest grouping (a political family to which European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, European Council President Donald Tusk and Miguel Arias Cañete, the climate action and energy commissioner, all belong), is holding a meeting beginning Thursday in Katowice, Poland.
A draft policy paper, seen by POLITICO, spells out three options for getting Brussels to speak with a unified voice on external energy security matters.
The first option calls for the creation of a new office within the European External Action Service, the EU’s diplomacy branch, which could better coordinate the work of the EU’s foreign policy chief and relevant commissioners.
The second takes a milder tone, calling on the Commission to set up “a permanent cluster” to better integrate policy, while the third one calls only for “regular coordination” between Federica Mogherini, the EU’s foreign policy chief, and the commissioners.
MEPs from CEE countries, where gas dependency on Russia is higher, support the text calling for the creation of the special office, which they see as a tangible step towards a policy that would allow the bloc to speak with a single voice in talks with Russia and Gazprom. However, members from western and northern Europe are wary of spawning more red tape.
Officials close to MEPs from both central and western Europe have confirmed there are disagreements on this issue.
“The need for more coordination is clear but I think we don't need to create more bureaucracy,” said group vice-president Françoise Grossetête, a French MEP who guided the draft drawn up by EPP’s working groups on economy and environment and foreign affairs together with Poland's Jacek Saryusz-Wolski.
Grossetête, who sits on the Parliament’s environment committee and is also a member of the EU-Russia parliamentary cooperation committee, would prefer the third option. More cooperation between Mogherini and the commissioners is “indispensable,” she said.
EU foreign affairs ministers reached the same conclusion at their meeting on July 20. While they then gave a thumbs-up to the EU’s energy diplomacy action plan, which the Commission and Mogerini’s office had jointly drafted, they also said that “systematic efforts should be made for the EU to speak with one voice on major energy issues both in bilateral relations and in multilateral frameworks,” according to the minutes.
The draft EPP paper also calls for setting up a collective purchasing system at the regional level, “where member states could voluntarily introduce a common negotiating mechanism and create regional hubs for further expansion of the gas supply infrastructure.”
This is similar to a proposal from the Commission, which waters down an idea originally suggested by Tusk when he was still prime minister of Poland that called on EU countries to set up a joint purchasing body to negotiate gas deals with Russia.
MEPs also have diverging views on this topic and will try to agree on a compromise at the meeting in Poland.
Christian Egenhofer, head of the energy and climate program at the Brussels-based Centre for European Policy Studies, said the difference of opinion among EPP members reflects long-standing divisions between EU countries on how to tackle energy issues.
“The split is along the same lines,” he said. “Member states don’t agree on most energy policy matters. They have very different views on Russia and even if you create a new office that discusses it, you don’t get around the issue of consensus.”
Around 60 of the grouping's 218 MEPs will be in Katowice to discuss the draft text. If a compromise is found, all EPP members will then vote on the proposed policy paper during a group meeting either at the first or second parliamentary plenary sessions in Strasbourg. The first session starts on September 7.