Energy Crisis, Geopolitical Pressures, and Public Trust: Assessing EU Regulatory measures to the 2022–2023 Shock

The 2022–2023 energy crisis, triggered by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, brought the “old geopolitics of energy” back to the centre of the European Union’s agenda. The abrupt disruption of Russian gas supplies — a cornerstone of Europe’s energy landscape for decades — exposed the depth of the EU’s structural dependence on Russian fossil fuels and revived longstanding concerns about energy security. This geopolitical shock generated unprecedented price volatility, placing considerable economic pressure on households, firms, and national governments. As energy is a fundamental input for economic activity, the crisis fuelled inflation, raised living costs, and reshaped socio-economic conditions across the Union. These material effects are likely to influence how citizens evaluate EU performance during the crisis, with potential implications for trust in EU institutions. In response to the dramatic energy supply shock, the EU adopted a series of emergency measures designed to stabilise markets and cushion the socio-economic fallout. These actions — including temporary price interventions, coordinated gas-storage requirements, demand-reduction measures, and support to vulnerable households and firms — reflected the Union’s attempt to manage an energy crisis deeply rooted in the geopolitical consequences of the war. They also align with broader debates about the EU’s capacity to respond effectively to external energy disruptions and to reinforce energy security under rapidly changing geopolitical conditions. This paper examines how socio-economic factors such as inflation, GDP per capita and unemployment, together with key EU crisis-response instruments, relate to citizens’ trust in the EU during the 2022–2023 energy shock. Using a fixed-effects empirical strategy across member states, the study evaluates whether the severity of the economic consequences diminished trust, or whether EU-level interventions helped sustain confidence by signalling responsiveness, competence, and resilience in a moment of geopolitical upheaval. By analysing the relationship between energy security, crisis management and public trust, the paper contributes directly to the conference theme by showing how a major external geopolitical shock reshaped EU energy governance and influenced the Union’s legitimacy in the eyes of its citizens.