Lessons learned: how past crises influenced energy crisis governance

The European Union (EU) has faced a multitude of crises, and we can no longer expect a return to stability (Wolff and Ladi 2020). To manage these crises, the EU mostly found ad-hoc solutions and improvised to govern the crises, as no template existed on how to act. However, what happens when the EU has already encountered a crisis in a particular policy field? How have past crises shaped the Union’s capacity to detect emerging threats, make sense of unfolding crises, and act collectively once a crisis materializes? This paper examines how the EU engagesd in collective learning (Heikkila and Gerlak 2013; Capati 2023; Ladi and Tsarouhas 2020) through both intercrisis and intracrisis processes (Moynihan 2008). We show how earlier crises shape learning across successive phases of detection and sense-making (Backmann and Rhinard 2017; Carstensen 2011), and how intracrisis learning shapes the crisis management beyond a crisis. Focusing on energy crises, this paper traces the EU’s evolving approach to security of supply. The gas sector long remained largely unaddressed in security discussions. The gas crises of 2006 and 2009 marked turning points, highlighting the need for a coordinated EU response, motivating the introduction of a set of security of supply tools at different political levels, such as stress tests and early warning mechanisms. Through detailed document analysis triangulated with expert interviews, this paper assesses the extent to which these new tools have enabled policy decisions and fostered energy solidarity. We analyse three phases: (1) the development of tools and governance capacities since 2006, (2) the detection and sense-making processes preceding the 2022 crisis, and (3) the crisis response and lessons learned during 2022. We find that the EU had substantial tools at its disposal, yet these did not automatically translate into accurate sense-making and collective action.