EU’s “Greening Mission”: EU’s Neo-Colonial Energy Policy in the Southern Mediterranean Region

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

Department of Regional Studies, Faculty of Law and Political Science, University of Tehran

10.22059/jices.2025.377685.1070

Abstract

The EU has embraced the power of renewables. Considering the EU’s poor energy resources, it seems only natural that the EU strives for closer energy ties with the energy-rich Southern and Eastern Mediterranean Countries (SEMCs). Despite the discovery of relatively large gas fields in the South Eastern Mediterranean shores, there has been relatively less emphasis and financial support from EU on building new gas pipelines and a clear shift in EU policy to instead fund exploitation of renewable energy resources in SEMCs. It is more striking post Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and EU’s urgent need to find new energy supplies. Therefore, the main research question is as follows: How has the EU’s renewable policy affected the development of gas network between the EU and SEMCs? To answer the above question, it is hypothesized that EU’s renewable policy, with electricity and grid connectivity at its heart, has resulted in energy policy shift to renewables at the cost of new gas pipelines. The theoretical framework draws from Kalypso Nicolaidis’s neo-colonialism. Considering the research question and the nature of the data, we employed the critical discourse analysis as the method approach. The research findings show that EU has expanded the European universalism to the energy domain, effectively guiding the non-European countries on the southern shores of the Mediterranean Sea to a transition of energy based on its own “needs” and “image”, leading to the “Greening Mission” and “EUlectrification”.

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