European security and energy: Towards post-liberal energy security?

Long described as an “ambiguous concept”, the meaning of security is in constant evolution, reflecting the values and tensions in different geographical and temporal contexts. Energy security is thus an equally moving target. In Europe, energy security reflected for a long time the liberal understanding of security, where threats and risks became de-territorialised and its scope ever broader and global in scale. The expansion of EU market rules, climate policy and sustainable development were the core recipe to spread energy security in a globalising world. The internal and external dimensions of energy security went hand in hand. In recent years, in parallel with the severing of the international liberal order, European energy security has experienced a re-territorialisation, the return of a notion of prophylactic security, driven by the goal of protecting this inside from the outside. This handbook chapter retraces and assesses the extent to which we are witnessing a re-inscription of the state and national (and/or European) sovereignty in matters of energy security. The chapter unpacks some of the main “new” areas of energy security, including clean energy technologies, critical minerals, strategic connectivity or the geoeconomic turn of climate and sustainability policies. The chapter ends with a reflection on the practical and normative implications of these changes and the role of academic inquiry in the future of European energy security.