Creative Commons

The EU - Russia relations are taking place in a complicated and systemically unstable international environment. In this context, energy is a field of a coexisting conflict and cooperation between those two regional actors. The purpose of this paper is to examine the g as pipeline diplomacy in EU - Russia relations. In particular the paper seeks to examine the mechanisms and tools that Russia has devised to implement its gas pipeline diplomacy toward EU, given that its vast energy resources are a crucial source of its political power projection. The paper reviews the EU energy policy and security towards Russia and places special emphasis on the degree of the EU - Russia mutual dependency on energy and the energy security dilemmas as well . Moreover, it examines the Russia’s gas pipeline diplomacy and underlines the strategic dimension of russian energy policy, while it presents the gas pipeline projects that refer to the EU - Russia energy relations. The main argument of the paper is that there is mutual energy interdependence between EU and Russia; Europe is highly dependent on Russian gas, while Russia depends on gas revenues stemming from energy trade with Europe. However, this interdependence is highly complicated and it is hard to argue the degree to which the two actors depend to each other. However, it appears that currently this energy interdependence is asymmetrical favoring Russia. In any case, this certain degree of interdependence shapes among others the base on which both conflict and cooperation are built between the EU and Russia