balkan analysis
November 16, 2010
By Vlad Popovici*
Each year, the European Union publishes an enlargement strategy document describing the main objectives of the enlargement process for the coming year, as well as progress or opinion reports on all the candidate countries and potential candidate countries. The EU’s 2010 strategy and progress report provides several interesting updates concerning the main changes and reforms implemented in the energy sector of the reviewed countries (most of them from Southeast Europe), and makes some recommendations regarding the steps that should be taken by them in the future.
So far, the EU strategy document’s findings are too fresh to have createdany significant response from private or public stakeholders. Nevertheless,a quick analysis of the document can prove valuable for assessing how thedifferent countries are performing in the energy sector relative to eachother, and from the EU’s rather rigid perspective. And what the EUperceives will in time have ramifications for larger energy developmentswithin the region.
For their part, private companies already know the issues of the energy sector in Southeast Europe, where themes such as state dominance and corruption continue to be mentioned. The EU’s progress reports, though somewhat benign in their phrasing, are commonly understood as a means of putting pressure on the governments in the region to carry out reforms- while also serving as an external benchmark that can be cited when governments seek to compare themselves favorably to their neighbors. in the ongoing competition to attract foreign investment and technologies.
On November 9, 2010 the European Commission adopted and published the Enlargement Strategy and Main Challenges 2010-2011 (PDF) document, explaining its enlargement policy objectives for the next year. The strategy document is accompanied by a series of country progress reports for the candidate and potential candidate countries, all of them (except Iceland) being countries from Southeast Europe – Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, the Republic of Macedonia (referred to by its provisional UN name, FYROM), Montenegro, Serbia and Turkey.
Both the strategy document and the progress reports are extensive documents covering political and economic criteria, as well as a thorough assessment of the ability of each country to assume the obligations of EU membership. Although energy is just one of the topics covered in these vast reports, an analysis of these reports reveals some important milestones reached by each country, as well as some guidelines regarding the path forward.
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*Vlad Popovici is a professional analyst and consultant on the energy sector who has published widely on various international business and economics topics since 1996, in various global electronic and print media, in English, German, Romanian and Russian. His current focus is energy policy, renewable energy resources, energy infrastructure projects, and energy geopolitics.
balkan analysis
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