Paper Titles & Abstracts

This paper reviews the current state of play of EU-Russia energy relations. In a three-part overview, it suggests that the hard-nosed negotiations displayed during the first term of President Putin softened considerably under the liberalizing tendencies of President Medvedev (legislative overhauls regarding public/private overlaps, transformations to key energy actors, and an upswing in FDI). Putin's second term however threatens to row back on a number of these 'domestic détentes' within Russia, and has injected a tougher tone to broader EU-Russia energy relations, particularly as they touch on key legislative initiatives emerging from the European Commission (DG Competition) including third party access, and unbundling. The first part of this paper determines the nature of this peak/trough/peak in 'energy amicability', and the knock-on effect this has had to the overall relations. In its second part, the paper will analyze some of the apparent consequences of this diplomatic volte face, including the current state of affairs of the Energy Charter Treaty, in the wake of the 2009 Russian termination of its provisional application, and the nature the ECT's apparent "enlargement overhaul", the extension of the Energy Community Treaty, and the EU's increasing ambitions to extend its diplomatic presence to Central Asia in the form of Central Asian Partnerships.