Energy transformation is creating systemic shifts inside the EU and globally. To face the challenges, the European Union has established the Energy Union and made a considerable progress in achieving certain of its objectives. Regional cooperation was strengthened in the realm of decarbonisation, resilient infrastructure - interconnectors, LNG terminals etc, but the challenges are manifold. The energy geopolitics remains grounded on the fragmented energy order and the diversification of gas supplies is still a key issue where not only market-based calculations but also geopolitical rationale is at play.

This conferences aims to discuss the options to secure the needs of the EU in the energy realm - domestically and also within its Eastern neighbourhood where continuity of energy supplies is one of the pillars of the EU’s policies. The first panel of the conference will focus on the perspectives and challenges facing the Energy Union. The second panel will strive to discuss the security implications of different gas transportation routes within the Baltic Sea and Black Sea-Caspian region (Nord Stream 2, Southern gas corridor, Turkish Stream etc).

Program:

09:30 – 10:00           Registration

10:00 – 10:10           Opening Remarks

 Beate Martin, Director, Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung Budapest Office

Péter Balázs, Director, CEU Center for European Neighborhood Studies (CENS) 

10:10 – 11.40   Panel I:  The EU’s Energy Union: Challenges of governance and delivering

Chair: Michael LaBelle, associate professor, the Jean Monnet Chair in Energy and Innovation Strategies, Central European University

Christian Egenhofer, Director of the Energy Climate House, Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS), Brussels

Elina Brutschin, Assistant Professor, Webster Vienna Private University

Robert Stüwe, Research Fellow, Center for European Integration Studies, University of Bonn

 11:40 – 12:10  Coffee-break

 12:10 – 13:40  Panel II: The geopolitics of pipelines: discussing the diversification  options

 Chair: András Deák, research fellow, Institute of World Economics of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences

Marco Siddi, Senior Research Fellow, Finnish Institute of International Affairs (FIIA)

Gulmira Rzayeva, Research Associate, Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, and Founding Director, Eurasia Analytics

Slawomir Raszewski, Visiting Professor, Institute of Political Science and International Relations, Jagiellonian University, Krakow

Andrej Nosko, Visiting Assistant Professor, Faculty of Political Sciences and International Relations of Matej Bel University, Banská Bystrica, Slovakia

  Please register HERE