Creative Commons

This dissertation was written as part of the MA in Black Sea Cultural Studies at the International Hellenic University. This essay explores the issues related to energy cooperation and regional security between the European Union and Russia. Moreover, the sector of the energy combined with the economic and political influence - the involved states and organizations play- has a significant role. The collapse of the communist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe opened up new avenues of interaction between the EU and its eastern neighbors. The impact of the crisis in Ukraine is one important example that I include to my dissertation in details without excluding Georgia and Turkey. As the implications of EU and NATO enlargement became more evident, new complications emerged in the NATO-EU-Russian relationship. The “broken promise” and the uneasy partnership between NATO and Russia is an important branch of my paper as the main problem between the two sides, especially the Russian, is coming from this influencing the neighboring security and the fluent and non – stop gas supply to the Union. Specifically, I take a look to the structural differences of the two sides and how the past two decades are dominated by tensions and misunderstandings between Russia and the EU even though they try to keep stable and peaceful relations. Although the trade, energy and investment relationship is clearly beneficial, however, it is often a source of tensions. Furthermore, I analyze the EU and the ex Soviet State relation on the energy sector, especially at the gas supply-demand between the two trade corridors in combination with the military cooperation and the security reforms that should take place in order to have actually positive impacts of their cooperation. At last I relate EU‘s energy dependence with the new “energy nationalism” that comes from the producer states like Russia, which increases assertive policies, intensifying the main priority of the EU, the diversification of energy supply.