Europe seeks to draw lessons from gas crisis[fr][de] 

Commission President José Manuel Barroso welcomed the resumption of gas deliveries to Europe on Tuesday (20 January), after a two-week standoff that left millions of East Europeans without heating in the middle of winter.

But he also warned that long-term lessons should be drawn from the crisis. "We must not allow ourselves to be placed in this position in future," Barroso said in a statement. "The message I will take to the March European Council is that now we have to be serious about diversifying and investing in Europe's energy security future."

Barroso particularly referred to five billion euro of unspent EU money, which he said should be spent on infrastructure "to encourage both diversity of energy sources and supply routes". A proposal to unblock the funds is currently being discussed in the Council, and Barroso said he would seek "rapid agreement" on identifying priority projects with the 27 EU member states.

The planned Nabucco pipeline, which would bring Caspian gas to Europe, notably via Bulgaria and Austria, is expected to resurface as one of the key projects supported by the Commission and the Czech EU Presidency (EurActiv 9/01/09). Other projects are included in the Commission's strategic energy review, notably the Baltic interconnection plan for electricity.

But EU governments are also trying to use the crisis to push forward their own agendas. In Germany, Economy Minister Michael Glos recently told Handelsblatt newspaper that the crisis had demonstrated that no country could afford to give up on any single source of energy, explicitly referring to nuclear power.

"This position has to be seen in the context of the pre-election battle," said Susanne Nies of the French Institute for International Relations (IFRI). Speaking to EurActiv France in an interview , Nies said the gas crisis has given new ammunition for Chancellor Angela Merkel, who was "always favourable" to nuclear, to raise the issue in the campaign for the general elections of 27 September.

Other countries like Bulgaria and Slovakia have been seeking to use the dispute to restart ageing nuclear power stations, which had to be shut down to meet EU accession criteria (EurActiv 12/01/09).

In Russia, Gazprom, the state-owned gas monopoly, said the dispute had emphasised the need to build the South Stream pipeline, which would bring Russian gas to Italy via the Balkans. "It is clear that the sooner this diversification of transit routes takes place, the better for Europe," said Gazprom's Deputy CEO Alexander Medvedev. "This is not only in respect of political risk, but also technical risk," he commented.