European Union Delegations’ Role(s) in EU Energy Diplomacy: Implementation at Different Speeds?

In the January 2021 Council conclusions, Member States called on the European Union (EU)’s diplomatic network, i.e. EU Delegations and Member States embassies in third countries, to increase ‘outreach and cooperation’ to further reinforce the external dimension of the European Green Deal. This call also referred to stepping up the EU’s energy diplomacy, which had first been explicitly formulated at the Council level in 2015, including the endorsement of an Energy Diplomacy Action Plan. However, since then - and up until the January 2021 conclusions - little attention had been paid at the higher political levels to follow up on how to concretely implement the new ambitions in the EU’s diplomatic outreach. At the same time, however, at the bureaucratic level, official posts dealing with energy diplomacy have been created within the EEAS, the EU’s diplomatic service. As such, we aim to explore the state and shape of EU energy diplomacy at the implementation level. We analyse the EU’s capacity to act in the contested area of external energy policies by focusing on how energy diplomacy has been implemented by EU Delegations in third countries. EU Delegations act as quasi-embassies, who represent the EU externally and project its foreign policy. Despite their relevant role in third countries, the role of EU Delegations as distinct diplomatic actors has received little systematic academic attention so far. Building on semi-structured qualitative interviews with EU diplomats located in EU Delegations in various third countries, we uncover significant variation in how EU Delegations implement energy diplomacy. Using Qualitative Comparative Analysis and building on both EU-internal and external context factors, we show how contestation on various levels explains the variation in Delegations’ diplomatic output. We thereby offer a nuanced, yet systematic insight into the role of Delegations in implementing the EU’s diplomatic ambitions in the area of energy.