It was by way of energy (mainly coal at the time) that the countries of Europe laid the foundations for their union in the 1950s (the Treaty of the European Coal and Steel Community, signed in 1951). Though that community ended in 2002 (integrated into the Union), questions of energy have nonetheless remained crucial on the European Union’s political agenda. They have loomed even larger in the context of the battle against climate change, as the EU occupies a special place in the world with ambitious objectives in terms of transition to carbon neutrality.
What are the issues for the European Union in this energy transition? And what measures have been put in place to achieve it? What might be in a European Green Deal of the kind that the EU Commission which took office at the end of 2019 has raised? As part of this second instalment in the series Futuribles is devoting to climate and energy questions, Thomas Pellerin-Carlin lays out the present realities and objectives of this ‘Energy Europe’.
