Recently, Europe is suffering from an energy crisis, which Russia triggered after the invasion of Ukraine. Russian President, Vladimir Putin threatened to turn off the gas supply to Europe because of the EU’s support for Ukraine. Under the circumstance that the EU’s membership faces the biggest crisis they have ever met, it will be a harsh winter without heat and lacking electricity. To overcome this situation, the EU members need to help each other through control of market mechanisms and cooperation to avoid the collapse of the EU.
First, controlling the market mechanisms is necessary for the EU market. Without control of the market mechanism, the prices of energy will be much higher, the governments can use this tool to cap the price of energy. The UK’s new prime minister, Liz Truss, set the agenda to demonstrate that she will freeze the price for two years, and the EU is considering capping the revenues of power generators. In addition, governments can use a market mechanism to encourage investment in new capacities and new innovations, which can relieve the energy shortage.
Second, the EU members need to cooperate. Under this situation, each country will solve its internal problems first, which means nationalism will show itself again. Each country will store as much as energy as they can, causing other countries to face shortages. For example, Nord Stream 2, a supply pipeline of natural gas across many countries from Russia, may make some countries take a lot of natural gas when the pipeline crosses its countries, while other countries will argue that those countries reduce the supply for others. So all countries need to cooperate to avoid this situation, or the EU will collapse easily because of this energy crisis.
In conclusion, the energy crisis is testing the cooperative capacity of EU member states, and they need to show collective will and control the market mechanism to deal with this crisis.
Written by Eddie C.
Edited by Ari B.