Introduction
For over a decade, the European CommissionFootnote 1 has regularly warned that the security of EU energy supplies, particularly gas, is at risk. The intensity and resonance of these concerns has steadily increased, following temporary disruptions to gas imports, the enlargement of the EU to include Member States highly dependent on external supplies, and the deterioration of political relations between the EU and its main supplier Russia. Such warnings have frequently acted as impetuses for the Commission to propose further integration of national energy policies, often as a means of sharing risks and increasing the security of supplies. This has generated a vibrant debate about the prospects for the further integration of EU energy policy in the face of continuing and developing threats to energy security.Footnote 2
While many observers have characterised these developments as the ‘securitisation’ of EU energy policy,Footnote 3 there have been relatively few attempts to specifically examine these developments through the lens of securitisation theory.Footnote 4 The few attempts to do so have reached different conclusions about whether securitisation has been successful or not,Footnote 5 and in doing so have highlighted an apparent paradox at the heart of EU energy policy. While shared security concerns are frequently used as a justification for further integration,Footnote 6 they can also serve as a rationale for Member States to resist any transfer or sharing of competences.Footnote 7 As a result, the relationship between securitisation and integration remains ambiguous and poorly understood.
We argue that the key to understanding this relationship is to examine securitisation not just in terms of whether there is an intersubjective agreement about whether energy is a security concern, but also whether there is agreement about what kind of security concern they are. This requires taking a step back from the EU level and examining whether similar kinds of security concerns are present at the national level, which we do through a comparative analysis of attempts to securitise gas supplies in the UK and Poland. Rather than confining ourselves to a Copenhagen School understanding of securitisation, which adopts a narrow focus on the construction of discourses of existential threat, we adopt a wider approach that draws from both the philosophical and sociological wings of Securitisation Studies. From the philosophical wing, we utilise Olaf Corry’s distinction between securitisation and riskificationFootnote 8 as a means of examining the different ways that gas has been constructed as a security issue in each Member State. From the sociological wing, we highlight the key role played by contextual features – namely established modes of market and state-led energy governance, and the role of gas in national energy systems – in enabling and constraining securitisation/riskification.
The central research problem we address here is why EU energy policy integration has been limited, despite claims by the Commission that a lack of integration poses a security threat. In our case studies we demonstrate that the UK and Polish governments have different conceptions of the insecurity of gas supplies within their respective countries: the former conforming to a logic of riskification, and the latter conforming to a logic of securitisation. We argue that the presence of these different logics raises questions about whether the Commission can reconcile them into a common intersubjective understanding of threats as a means of legitimising the further integration of EU energy policy.
The article develops in four parts. The first outlines our theoretical framework, which focuses on multiple logics of insecurity and the role of contextual factors. Section two briefly traces the Commission’s discourse of insecurity and its promotion of a predominantly liberal market approach to securing gas supplies in order to contextualise our comparative analysis. Sections three and four outline the empirical analysis of our case studies on the UK and Poland respectively. We conclude with reflections on the utility of the concepts of securitisation and riskification and the considerable barriers to premising further energy policy integration on security concerns.
Securitising energy?
The core argument of securitisation studies is that instead of examining whether or not real and objective threats exist, analysts should focus on the process through which such security issues are socially constructed. This enables an examination of how such issues emerge and dissolve, and what impact they have on politics and policymaking. The Copenhagen School’s original securitisation framework focuses on an examination of political discourse for evidence of security speech acts, and their acceptance or rejection by a relevant audience.Footnote 9 Within this framework, such speech acts take the form of an existential threat to the survival of a valued referent object. Successful securitisation is evident in the reproduction of these claims within wider political discourse and the development of an environment in which extraordinary measures can be adopted which ‘break the normal political rules of the game’.Footnote 10
The Copenhagen School framework has been the subject of extensive critiques that have called into question almost every element of the theory.Footnote 11 Many of these shortcomings become especially apparent when the theory is applied to different empirical cases, which highlight the often diverse ways in which (in)security is constructed in practice. This is especially the case when the framework has been used to examine energy politics in the EU,Footnote 12 the US,Footnote 13 and East Asia,Footnote 14 where the limitations of the Copenhagen School have been all too apparent. Two limitations are particularly relevant.
The first is that the Copenhagen School focuses on a single essentialist logic of security based on existential threats to survival to the exclusion of other possible logics or meanings of insecurity. This is problematic because, as recent debates on the concept of energy security have highlighted, there are many possible ‘meanings’ of security based partly on the interests of different actors involved in energy trade and governance, and multiple dimensions or types of energy (in)security.Footnote 15 To speak of energy security as if it were a single coherent discourse is highly questionable as such claims can take various forms across different contexts.Footnote 16 Because of the plurality of possible security meanings, energy issues are a ‘difficult case’ to examine using the original Copenhagen School framework. Nonetheless, this does not mean that discourses of energy security have no effect on the form or content of energy policy. Instead it means that analysts should be attuned to the possibility that energy may be constructed as a security issue in different ways, in different contexts, and with different political consequences.Footnote 17
Felix Ciută makes precisely this point in his critical analysis of different concepts of energy security in which he identifies both a logic of war, which closely aligns with the Copenhagen School focus on existential threats to survival, and a logic of subsistence.Footnote 18 He argues that the latter is not defined by, ‘the imperative to survive’, but instead, ‘by the functional demands of various sectors of activity, which means its absence does not lead to extinction, but to dysfunction’.Footnote 19 These logics involve quite different types of security claims that are part of a more general distinction between security and risk. While there are also arguably different conceptions of risk, a broad distinction can be drawn between security threats that are immediate and urgent, and risks that are longer-term, based on uncertain and more diffuse dangers.Footnote 20
In a constructive ‘philosophical’ critique of the Copenhagen School,Footnote 21 Corry separates these logics into distinctive processes of securitisation and riskification, in which the former is based on direct causes of harm that threaten the survival of a referent object, while the latter is based on indirect causes of harm that put the governability and resilience of a referent object at risk. While both processes begin with security speech acts, they take different forms. They are based on alternative constructions of the kind of threat, the values to be protected, and the nature of the response to these threats. Instead of leading to measures aimed at eliminating or severely curtailing an existential threat, Corry argues that riskification tends to lead to ‘programmes for permanent changes aimed at reducing vulnerability and boosting governance-capacity of the valued referent object itself’.Footnote 22
Such a philosophical distinction between logics of securitisation and riskification would appear to be particularly well-suited for examining energy security because, as even a cursory glance at the literature on energy security reveals, many of the claims about security are about risks rather than threats.Footnote 23 However, adopting a sharp distinction between logics of securitisation and riskification is not without its problems. It runs into some of the same issues with essentialism found in a classic Copenhagen School framework by positing ‘risk’ as a unified and rule-bound logic that neglects questions of how risks, like security threats, are constructed within particular cultures over timeFootnote 24 and are themselves subjected to contestation and adaptation in concrete empirical circumstances. It also brackets the question of whether a logic of riskification can be ‘intensified’ into a logic of securitisation or vice versa.Footnote 25 Nonetheless, it has clear methodological advantages, as a set of ideal types for identifying different claims about security and their implications for political practice in particular situations.Footnote 26 When comparing the construction of security across cases rather than engaging in a more contextualised examination of a single case, such a simplification is both desirable and necessary.
The second limitation of the Copenhagen School framework is its excessively textual understanding of (in)security, that neglects the important role that contextual factors can play in shaping the form, dynamics, and outcomes of securitisation processes.Footnote 27 As various researchers on the so-called ‘sociological’ wing of securitisation studies have argued, processes of securitisation and riskification do not occur in a vacuum, but instead within the context of established power relations and institutional structures, which can enable or constrain the form and process of construction, as well as policy responses.Footnote 28 These factors define the pre-established ‘normal’ politics of an issue, shaping the specific way in which attempts to reconstruct those issues in terms of security or risk will play out. Such a critique is particularly relevant for energy issues, where it is possible to identify two sets of contextual factors that affect the treatment of energy as a ‘normal’, ‘risk’, or ‘security’ issue – technical and political-economic factors.
At the technical level, energy systems of any polity are complex; an assemblage of a particular mix of fuels in overall consumption and electricity production, the sources of these supplies (imported/domestic), established roles for particular types of energy in particular economic sectors, and a configuration of physical infrastructure including the capacity to import, produce, and transmit. Major changes to any aspect of this assemblage will generally be very difficult, time-consuming, and expensive, often requiring the construction of new generation and/or transit infrastructure.Footnote 29 As a result, these technical factors are liable to produce strong path-dependent effects that shape and constrain future actions.Footnote 30
At the political-economic level, energy is produced, traded, and used under certain conditions that are regulated by state actors engaged in different levels and forms of market intervention. These conditions constitute the ‘rules of the game’ that structure the interactions of different actors.Footnote 31 Various typologies within Energy Studies draw distinctions between different forms of energy governance in particular states or regions such as, ‘liberalism’ and ‘geopolitics’, ‘economic liberalism’ and ‘resource nationalism’,Footnote 32 ‘liberal’ and ‘state’ capitalism,Footnote 33 or ‘markets and institutions’ and ‘regions and empires’.Footnote 34 Subtly different emphases aside, in all cases the main distinction that most researchers draw is between market-led and state-led systems of energy governance.Footnote 35
Market-led governance is based on a deregulated market-based system of energy production, trade, and consumption. Under this approach, market participants are the primary actors, which are expected to ensure supply reliability with minimal involvement or oversight from government actors. These actors are granted considerable autonomy, and in most cases are wholly or predominantly private entities.Footnote 36 State-led governance, by contrast, is based on the subservience of markets to the political objectives of the state. Governments are the primary actors, not only involved in regulating market conditions, but also exercising substantial influence and control over the actions of market participants.
Although technical and political-economic factors are both likely to play a role in any attempt at constructing energy as a security issue, their relative importance in enabling and constraining securitisation or riskification will differ. We expect that although technical factors can act as constraints on possible material changes to energy systems, particularly in the short-term, they will primarily function as resources for actors’ claims about the (lack of) security within a polity. ‘High dependence’ or ‘high consumption’ do not automatically mean that energy will be securitised or riskified – this will depend on whether or not actors discursively construct these factors as ‘existential threats’ or ‘risks’. The task of the analyst should therefore be to identify whether an intersubjective understanding of these technical factors emerges among actors involved in energy governance, or whether different understandings emerge between different groups.
Political-economic factors on the other hand could be much more decisive in whether energy issues can be securitised or riskified. As noted above, such factors structure the actions and interactions of the actors involved in energy governance. As such, they define what constitutes ‘normal’ energy politics in a particular spatial and temporal context. Across the EU Member States for instance, there is a range of modes of energy governance from market-led to state-led. This does not mean that these structures are deterministic or cannot change; indeed constructing energy as a security issue is one such way in which the normal ‘rules of the game’ can be changed. However what securitisation and riskification mean cannot be separated from the particular political-economic circumstances in which they emerge. In particular, we expect that market-led and state-led energy governance will be amenable to the logics of securitisation and riskification to differing degrees.
While securitisation is possible in market-led systems, it would require fundamental changes that would undermine the basis of a liberal market. It would involve major levels of government intervention and the central coordination of market participants’ activities, subordinating the market to the achievement of political objectives. In short, it is the antithesis of a liberal approach and would involve a radical shift from a market-led to a state-led system of energy governance. In a state-led system, securitisation is more likely because the state already tends to direct the energy system in the pursuit of other goals, and the adoption of exceptional measures to eliminate an existential threat does not undermine the economic foundations of the system of governance.Footnote 37 While riskification could occur under either political-economic system in principle, we expect it to be more likely under market-led systems. Although major government interventions would undermine such systems, selective interventions focused on improving resilience may be permissible as a means of preserving the autonomy of market participants and the functioning of a liberal market. By steering energy companies to take government-identified risks into account in their normal market activities, this can allow market failures to be addressed through primarily market-based means. This kind of riskified governance would certainly involve greater levels of government influence, but without completely subordinating the market to the political objectives of the state.
Research design and methods
Taken together, these twin critiques of the Copenhagen School point to the need for taking different logics of security and how these may be shaped by contextual conditions seriously. In this article we respond to this need through an analysis of constructions of gas as a security issue in two EU Member States – the UK and Poland. This analysis is based around two research questions. First, has gas been constructed as a security issue and, if so, what form do those constructions take? Second, have technical and economic factors played a role in shaping these attempts to construct gas as a security issue?
To address these questions, we focus on the time period in which concerns about energy security became prominent in the EU – 2006 to 2015. While it is common to focus on shorter ‘moments’ of exceptional discursive claims in securitisation analyses, we start from the premise that the construction of a security issue can also be an iterative, gradual process.Footnote 38 This allows us to examine whether particular discourses and the policies that are enabled by them have become institutionalised and widely accepted or not.
While the analysis of all EU Member States would allow us to fully gauge the level of intersubjective agreement about the kind of security concern gas is, this is not possible in the space of a single article. Instead, we begin by providing a brief overview of the major discursive and governance changes at the EU level in order to contextualise developments in the Member States. We then proceed to analyse two Member States case studies that we have chosen as exemplars of the very different systems of energy governance that currently exist among the Member States, and whose governments have repeatedly and frequently expressed concerns about energy security over at least the past decade.
In both cases, we focus on gas for two reasons. Gas has been the main focus of most claims about energy (in)security across Europe. Excluding other energy sources from our analysis also allows a narrower focus on the two contextual conditions identified above which, we argue, have the greatest role to play in shaping security constructions. At the technical level, we assess the relative share of gas in the energy and electricity production mixes of these Member States, and levels of dependence on particular routes or sources of gas supplies. At the economic level, we assess the respective roles of government and market actors in implementing governing gas supplies and responding to shifting security evaluations.
The analysis of each Member State involves tracing how energy has been presented as a security issue in official discourse, how durable these constructions have been over time, and what the relative influence of contextual factors is in each case. In each empirical section, we analyse changes in discourse and modes of energy governance separately, which allows us to analytically distinguish their effects and to account for their interaction. Across these two sections, we utilise a wide range of primary data in the form of publically available government and EU policy documents and statistics, speeches by prominent actors, reports by government agencies, and secondary literature by country and issue area experts.Footnote 39 For the purposes of tracing discursive change, we focus on elite sources because the energy sector is relatively closed and technocratic in comparison with other sectors, which means that the authority to ‘speak security’ is largely confined to government elites and market participants, rather than requiring the explicit agreement of wider audiences.
Constructing an energy union
From its original guidelines on a European energy policy to the Energy Union proposal, the Commission has long sought to base a common energy policy on the twin objectives of ensuring, ‘security of supply at prices which are relatively stable and as low as possible’.Footnote 40 These objectives have been supplemented since the 2000s by a third objective of sustainability and climate change policy.Footnote 41 Prior to 2006, the Commission had already begun to speak of energy in terms of risks to the security of supplies. In 2000 it released a green paper on the security of energy supplies in which it framed growing dependence as a ‘structural weakness’,Footnote 42 which made the EU vulnerable to any supply disruptions.Footnote 43 Such tentative moves into security discourse were not about urgent and existential threats, but about potential supply risks.Footnote 44
Two major gas supply disruptions, in 2006 and 2009, acted as catalysts for the Commission to repeatedly portray supplies as insecure. Following the initial disruption, the language of risk featured increasingly prominently, with the Commission warning in its 2007 white paper that the ‘risk of supply failure is growing’.Footnote 45 In 2008 the Commission argued that:
A number of Member States are overwhelmingly dependent on one single supplier [for gas]. Political incidents in supplier or transit countries, accidents or natural disasters, the impacts of climate change, remind the EU of the vulnerability of its immediate energy supply.Footnote 46
Such attempts to securitise, or more accurately riskify gas, can only be understood in the context of the different modes of energy governance in the EU’s Member States, and the Commission’s attempts to reshape these in a more liberalised and integrated direction. Traditionally, Member States have pursued energy policies in relative isolation from each other and in most cases have had to rely on nationally negotiated deals to import gas from non-EU countries due to a lack of domestic gas production.Footnote 47 The reliability and availability of supplies was generally achieved through stable long-term contracts, joint ownership and financing of long-distance transit pipelines, prices determined by oil-indexation rather than market dynamics, and national restrictions on the final destination of the commodity. Under this arrangement both consumers’ security of supply and producers’ security of demand were ensured through stable and predictable contracts, creating a mutual interdependence.Footnote 48
The Commission has consistently promoted the idea of an alternative: A single internal gas market premised on the development of a liberalised and competitive market for gas in which short-term trades are possible, prices are primarily based on the dynamics of supply and demand, and movement of supplies across the EU is unrestricted. While this undermines the traditional model of security, the objective is increased security of supply through greater diversification, increased interdependence between Member States, and a reduction in the potential for supply disruptions to cause interruptions to customer supplies.Footnote 49 In short, the Commission’s efforts to develop an internal gas market have been an attempt to construct a sector in which the role of the state is to set limited regulatory conditions and only intervene in cases of market failure; a distinctly liberal approach to the security of supplies premised on integrationist principles.
In 2006 the basic building blocks of such an approach were already in place, following the passage of the first and second packages of internal market legislation.Footnote 50 The ‘Third Package’ adopted in 2009 involved more market regulation; to ensure the separation of gas transmission from other activities to prevent cross-subsidy and anti-competitive practices among previously integrated companies.Footnote 51 Other gas legislation has, in most cases, been significantly based on a liberal market approach, including the prioritisation of efforts to liberalise energy markets through the Third Energy package. For instance, the adoption of legislation for the prevention and management of supply disruptions in 2010Footnote 52 was explicitly premised on a hierarchy of intervention in which market participants would be allowed to respond in the first instance, with recourse to national governments or coordinated EU level action only in extreme circumstances. The Commission has been more actively involved in funding gas infrastructure, particularly reverse flows on existing pipelines to enable the mitigation of supply disruptions, though this has involved relatively minor investments.Footnote 53 The Commission has extended its role regarding intergovernmental agreements for the supply of gas; as part of its Energy Union proposals it has sought a greater, ex ante, and participatory role.Footnote 54 This is a rare exception to a strictly liberal approach, along with the EU-Russia Early Warning mechanism for gas supply disruptions.
As Andreas Goldthau and Nick Sitter argue, the Commission can be described as a ‘mostly’ liberal actor.Footnote 55 However, this does not mean that EU energy policy as a whole can be described as market-led. On the contrary, progress towards achieving gas market objectives has been slow, with liberalisation developing at different paces and to different levels in each Member State.Footnote 56 Both historically and in the present day, different Member States continue to conform more closely to either the state-led or market-led modes of energy governance. However, the ‘mostly liberal’ Commission has long been a riskifying actor, framing gas supplies as threatened by growing dependence and associated risks, most notably of supply disruptions that affect multiple Member States and the EU as a whole. It has consistently promoted a predominantly liberal approach to ensuring and improving the security of gas supplies, advocating an approach in which the state has a limited role except in ensuring market functioning.
United Kingdom
Prior to the Commission’s initial attempts to develop a liberalised and integrated gas market, the UK’s approach to energy governance had already undergone a period of radical transformation in the 1980s and 1990s towards less state intervention.Footnote 57 Key aspects of this transformation were a systematic withdrawal of the state from gas and wider energy policy, the privatisation of state energy companies, the dissolution of the Department of Energy in 1992, the transfer of residual policy functions to the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), and the establishment of independent regulators for electricity and gas. Privatised companies and other market participants filled the gap left by the withdrawal of the state, taking on the responsibility of ensuring the availability and reliability of supplies. Although this process was one component of a broader trend towards deregulation and privatisation across the UK economy under successive Conservative and Labour governments,Footnote 58 it was enabled by the UK’s lack of reliance on external sources of gas due to considerable domestic energy reserves and production.
The UK gas sector did, however, go through two important transitions at the technical level in the years prior to the period examined in this study. First, gas production peaked in 2000, leading to the UK becoming a net importer of gas in 2004. This largely coincided with the UK also becoming a net importer of oil and energy as a whole, which amounted to a major structural transformation in the UK energy system. Second, in preparation for this transition, the UK gas market ended its market isolation in 1998, following the construction of a pipeline to Belgium. This was eventually followed by further pipeline and LNG terminal developments in the early 2000s.Footnote 59
Discourses of gas insecurity
Prior to 2006, gas and other energy supplies were both depoliticised and desecuritised in the UK. Even when it became apparent that the UK was set to become a net importer, the security of gas supplies was not called into question. Most notably, when the government issued its white paper on Energy in 2003, the first in more than a decade, the importance of ‘maintaining reliability’ was emphasised, rather than any need to respond to emergent risks or threats.Footnote 60 Any risks to the security of supplies were described as ‘manageable’Footnote 61 and the prospect of greater import dependence was framed in terms of an unproblematic ‘interdependence’ with external suppliers.Footnote 62 Such confidence in the security of supplies was also evident in various other government evaluations from the time.Footnote 63 It was underscored by the belief that, ‘markets are likely to deliver energy reliability most cost-effectively’,Footnote 64 and that the role of the state should be to monitor these markets for any potentially threatening developments, while promoting liberalisation and ‘good governance’ abroad. In contrast, climate change as a consequence of continuing to use fossil fuels was explicitly considered a major threat, to be addressed through a transition to low carbon energy sources.Footnote 65
Although UK supplies were not affected by the January 2006 disruption a discourse of gas supply insecurity nonetheless began to emerge at this time. At the broadest level, the security of energy supplies was elevated to parity with climate change as one of the two main objectives of UK energy policy, and as a source of potential threats and risks.Footnote 66 Gas supplies were singled out as a major source of potential risks,Footnote 67 associated primarily with a need to ensure adequate levels of investment in new infrastructure to replace declining domestic gas production with sufficient pipeline and liquefied gas capacity for importing supplies.Footnote 68 The degree of discursive change should not, however, be overstated. Statements about the security of supplies invariably took the form of highlighting potential rather than urgent risks or threats. The 2007 white paper on energy states that “imports are not in themselves a threat to security of supply [but] bring new associated risks”.Footnote 69 The potential for supply disruptions affecting the UK was considered unlikely before the mid-2010s. The real ‘risk’ was a lack of competitive markets on the main gas supply routes to the UK rather than rising import dependence specifically.Footnote 70
This discourse persisted following the 2009 gas supply disruption, although disagreements began to emerge about how to evaluate potential threats. In the first white paper produced by the newly established Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) the same discourse of potential risks present before the disruption was largely reproduced. It was emphasised that, “the immediate risks to UK security of supply were extremely low”, and that, “[t]he UK’s diverse sources of gas imports meant that we experienced little direct effect”.Footnote 71 In contrast, the 2009 ‘Wicks Report’ framed rising import dependence as an issue of “geopolitical security”Footnote 72 and issued stark warnings about “significant negative economic impacts” that could arise from gas supply disruptions.Footnote 73 While it was argued in the white paper that security should continue to be left to the market, the Wicks Report insisted that it was crucial that the UK, ‘retains independence in its foreign policy through avoiding dependence on particular nations’.Footnote 74 The Conservative Party was highly critical of the Labour Government’s energy policy in the lead up to the 2010 election, highlighting growing import dependence and declining electricity capacity margins as ‘major threats’ to energy security.Footnote 75
However, the lack of explicit references to these threats once the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition took power and after the formation of the majority Conservative government in 2015, suggests that this was merely electioneering rather than a substantive shift. Indeed, since 2010 the discourse has taken a similar form to the pre-2009 period. Repeated reassurances about the security of gas supplies were combined with statements about potential threats and risks that could emerge in the future. Each Annual Energy Statement and Security of Supply report presented to parliament offered reassurances that the UK has, ‘the most liquid and one of the largest gas markets in Europe with extensive import infrastructure and a diverse range of gas supply sources’.Footnote 76 Meanwhile the risks that these documents refer to are all potential rather than immediate. For instance:
The outlook for security of gas supply is broadly benign in the near term. This does not mean that it is risk-free; there are risks, both in the short-term and towards the second half of the decade when some uncertainties remain.Footnote 77
Far from increasing the intensity of threat constructions, government discourse since 2010 has gradually adopted a less securitised tone. The government stated in its 2013 Annual Energy Statement that the, ‘security of gas supply is expected to be robust in the short, medium and long term’Footnote 78 while the following year it reassured parliament that the UK gas system was, ‘capable of responding flexibly to changing market conditions … [as] has been well demonstrated in recent years in a range of challenging circumstances’.Footnote 79 Following Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, the government reported the results of stress tests, which concluded that even in the event of a ‘full cessation of Russian gas supplies into Europe for an entire winter’, UK gas supplies would not be disrupted.Footnote 80
Caroline Kuzemko has argued that following a prior depoliticisation of energy policy there has, since the late-2000s, been a qualified re-politicisation of energy policy in the UK. It is argued that this is ‘partly through the impact of [emerging] narratives of national energy supply (in)security’, so speech acts and the discursive construction of security contributing in turn to greater, though still limited, energy policy steering by the government.Footnote 81 Although a discourse of insecurity has emerged in the UK, we argue that it most clearly follows a logic of riskification rather than securitisation. Such a discourse has been relatively consistent throughout the entire 2006–15 period, with the government continually evaluating and reporting on risks to gas supplies in contrast to the period prior to this. Moreover, aside from some alarmist statements in 2008–10, these evaluations of the level of ‘risk’ have generally been favourable but not benign. Indeed, gas supplies are now frequently portrayed as a means of increasing the security of UK energy supplies more generally, as a reliable low-carbon backup for renewables and as a major part of the energy mix, rather than as a threat to ‘energy security’.Footnote 82 This indicates that both that riskification has occurred and that there are few signs of any transition to a more securitised discourse in the near future.
Energy governance
Discursive changes within the UK must be understood in relation to the structural change from a net exporter to a net importer of gas. Almost all energy policy documents make reference to this fact. Nonetheless, it would be inaccurate to view the emergence of a discourse of gas supply insecurity as a simple result of such changes at the technical level. The initial discursive changes began in the late 1990s, several years after this transition was well known. Moreover, throughout the period examined above, gas supply discourse did not contain claims about imminent or urgent threats despite dependence on imported gas expanding from zero in 2003 to 45 per cent by 2014 and gas continuing to occupy a prominent role in the UK energy mix. This lack of congruence between increased dependence and discursive change rules out a simple causal relationship. Where the transition had an effect is in providing the economic rationale for investment decisions taken by the private sector to construct pipelines for importing alternative supplies to the UK market in anticipation of the decline of North Sea production.Footnote 83 This enabled the UK to retain gas as a major component of its energy mix, established connections to other EU markets for the first time and opened the UK to international LNG markets. The security of UK gas supplies was then no longer shaped solely by domestic developments and the reliability of what was its only external supplier, Norway, but also by developments in continental Europe and beyond.
On the other hand, the fact that gas was such an important part of the UK’s energy mix prior to the transition, including in the generation of electricity, meant that there were strong economic incentives to source new supplies and significant economic barriers to investing in alternative energy sources and network infrastructures. Gas has retained a major role in the energy mix as a result, even as overall UK energy consumption declined from 2005 onwards. The share of gas in UK energy consumption expanded slightly between 2005 and 2010, from 37 per cent to 40 per cent, before dropping to 28 per cent in 2014, its lowest level since the 1990s. In 2014, gas still accounted for nearly a third of the electricity generated in the UK.Footnote 84
More important than changes at the technical level have been the presence and preservation of a market-led approach to energy governance. Throughout this period, decisions continued to be taken by private companies, highlighting that in terms of energy governance the UK gas market remains one of the most liberalised and least concentrated in the EU, with eight companies active in the supply or import of gas. Successive UK governments have routinely called for the further liberalisation of European gas markets and the development of open market and ‘good governance’ principles in states supplying energy to international markets.Footnote 85 Governments also resisted the temptation to directly intervene in the market by, for instance, developing strategic (rather than commercial) gas storage, arguing that this would be unduly expensive and could interfere with incentives for private companies to invest in such infrastructure as needed.Footnote 86 In 2015, the Energy Secretary stated that ‘We know competition works. It keeps costs low and can deliver a clean and reliable energy system.’Footnote 87 The objective was ‘allowing markets to flourish’.Footnote 88
While the market-led approach has not been displaced, faith in its ability to deliver security has increasingly been called into question. Some institutional and policy developments in recent years suggest that the UK has heeded Wicks’ dire warning that, ‘[t]he time for market innocence is over.’Footnote 89 The most visible development was the creation in 2008 of a dedicated energy department, DECC, the first such ministry in 26 years.Footnote 90 At its launch the Energy Minister Ed Miliband argued that the government would pursue a ‘strategic government and dynamic markets’ approach in a departure from the ‘markets-only’ approach of the past.Footnote 91 What this meant in practice was that the government would become more active in setting energy policy objectives and playing a greater role in correcting market failures without habitually intervening in the functioning of the markets. In the gas sector specifically, the most visible interventions focused on enabling and incentivising shale gas exploration within the UK. The coalition government established an Office of Unconventional Oil and Gas within DECC in 2013 to support exploration,Footnote 92 then moved this department’s functions to a separate Oil and Gas Authority. The Treasury supported this through reducing the tax paid by onshore gas projects (HMRC, 2013), while the prime minister actively lobbied the European Commission (with the Polish government) to ensure that exploration and drilling were not restricted by new regulations at the EU level (Cameron, 2013).
Whether such interventions represent a ‘paradigm shift’ in UK energy policy is an ongoing subject of debate within Energy Studies,Footnote 93 however it appears that, at least in the gas sector, none of these developments represents a decisive step away from market-led energy governance. Rather, they indicate a more active government policy in support of an otherwise resilient market-led approach through selective interventions. Although the coalition government became increasingly ‘interventionist’ regarding the development of shale gas, it was also explicit that it considered there to be ‘no clear case for a further intervention in the gas market above and beyond the range of measures we are already taking to enhance our gas security’.Footnote 94 There is no evidence that this has changed under the majority Conservative government.Footnote 95 Moreover, the transition from a net exporter to a net importer of gas has not resulted in a substantial reduction in the role of gas in the UK energy mix or the emergence of a highly securitised discourse about gas supplies. Instead gas has come to be viewed primarily as a means of ensuring wider energy security rather than as a direct source of threats. Extraordinary measures were not taken and instead government objectives have been focused on developing the resilience of the UK energy system within a largely liberal market approach.
Poland
Prior to the late 1980s, Poland was a planned economy and the energy sector was no exception.Footnote 96 There were high levels of state involvement, subsidised energy prices, low levels of energy efficiency, and little consideration of the environmental impact of energy use.Footnote 97 Enlargement pressure involved adhering to EU energy market liberalisation, and the 1997 Energy Law ActFootnote 98 paved the way for the transition towards a liberalised and unbundled energy market and the removal of state subsidies. In December 1999 the Ministries of Treasury, Economy, and Finance set out energy market liberalisation objectives,Footnote 99 followed by the passage of the 2000 Energy Policy which echoed these.Footnote 100
EU accession had a strong effect on Polish energy policy, but not an unconstrained one. As will be demonstrated, post-accession conditionality has been somewhat weaker in that transposition and implementation of EU legislation has at times been slow and frequently delayed. The state has retained ownership of unbundled firms, resisted the development of independent energy regulation,Footnote 101 and delayed price deregulation for households because of concerns about price volatility.Footnote 102
Discourses of gas insecurity
Prior to the 2006 gas supply disruption there was a distinct lack of securitisation in the gas sector. The 2000 Energy Security Strategy concluded that the ‘energy safety of the state … has not been threatened during the past few years’.Footnote 103 The 2003 National Security Strategy only included energy security as an objective of energy policy rather than being subject to explicit threats,Footnote 104 while the foreign ministers’ annual addresses from this time made no reference to threats or risks to energy nor national security.Footnote 105 The 2005 address concluded that ‘the horizon is fortunately clear of any threats to our security’.Footnote 106
Although energy security was not a salient issue during this period, this did not mean that the government was completely unconcerned. For instance, Russia was framed as one of a group of ‘dubious suppliers’, and ‘unfavourable prices’ were considered a problem.Footnote 107 Such concerns became amplified following the January 2006 supply disruption when Poland experienced a one-third decrease in gas imports from Russia, when energy became clearly securitised within the country, often taking the form of ‘existential threats’ to national security. President Lech Kaczynski, for instance, alluded to Russian revanchism, stating: ‘I do not want to create the impression that Poland or Europe is under [military] threat, it is not [but] there are different forms of expansion. And one of them is energy.’Footnote 108 The Polish foreign minister argued that ‘We cannot remain defenceless nor isolated amid this increasingly threatening situation.’Footnote 109
Immediately after the 2006 supply disruption, the Polish foreign minister proposed a European Energy Security Treaty in a letter to all EU and NATO member states:
EU member states [need a] ‘firmly stated guarantee clause based on the ‘musketeer principle’; ‘[an] expression of solidarity of its parties linking them in the face of an energy threat … [and] political decisions of suppliers.Footnote 110
The 2007 Polish National Security Strategy was similarly forthright, stating that: ‘[t]he dependence of Polish economy on supplies of energy resources – crude oil and natural gas – from one source is the greatest external threat to our security.’Footnote 111 The Ministry of Economy stated that the Nord Stream gas pipeline that was being constructed between Russia to Germany (bypassing Belarus and Poland) was ‘a serious threat to Polish national security’.Footnote 112 Similar securitising moves were evident throughout 2007 and 2008, with successive foreign ministers frequently portraying energy dependence as a ‘weapon’ that was a ‘threat’ to national security.Footnote 113
Such statements all indicate that energy was regarded as existentially threatened between 2006 and 2008, and even after a change in government and a ‘reset’ in relations with Russia, similar statements continued. Foreign policy statements constantly implied that a threat to energy security was a threat to national security and that insecurity was linked to increasing dependency and the perceived use of energy as a geopolitical tool by Russia. The Polish government prioritised energy security concerns in its foreign policy and in relations with the EU, most notably in its frequently expressed opposition to the Nord Stream pipeline, which often referenced ‘grand historical narratives of national identity and security’.Footnote 114
The effect of the 2009 Russia-Ukraine dispute was even more serious for Poland, which lost 45 per cent of its supplies, leaving it reliant on increased imports from Norway and its domestic gas storage.Footnote 115 In reaction, the Polish foreign minister made a series of statements emphasising the continued risk to national security.Footnote 116 In 2010, for instance. he argued that ‘Poland and Europe [are] not only affected by classical threats, but also by a diverse array [of] challenges such as energy crises’.Footnote 117 Overall, Poland pursued an energy policy with the key objective of enhancing supply security through diversification (natural gas, shale gas, coal, and also nuclear), and this element of energy security has been securitised and considered an ‘immediate threat’ to national security. Liberalisation of energy policy was accepted to an extent, while maintaining a large degree of government control in energy policy, and government intervention in regulated prices (for gas), which delayed transposition of the EU’s Second and Third Energy Packages.
Remarking on the Ukraine crisis in March 2014, the prime minister and foreign minister equated traditional security threats with energy security.Footnote 118 The Visegrad Group, including Poland, sent a letter in March 2014 to the US Congress, stating that ‘Gas-to-gas competition in our region is a vital aspect of national security.’Footnote 119 Later in the year a statement on Polish Foreign Policy Goals included reference to disruptions in energy supplies as a ‘threat’ (among others) facing Poland.Footnote 120 Again, with the Visegrad Group, Poland sent a letter to the Commission stating that the construction of the Nord Stream 2 may threaten the cohesion of the Common Foreign and Security Policy.Footnote 121
In contrast to the riskification of gas supplies in the UK, discourses of gas insecurity have more closely conformed to a classic Copenhagen School logic of securitisation. Government claims about threats to energy being a national security issue have been consistent since January 2006, despite changes in government, and have focused overwhelmingly on the perceived vulnerability of gas supplies from Russia. This securitisation has underpinned both the government’s desire for common EU action on energy security, and their hesitance to liberalise the Polish gas market in line with the European Commission’s proposals.
Energy governance
As the country prepared for accession to the EU in 2004 the government sought to transpose EU market liberalisation and renewable energy production requirements into domestic law. The sector also had to deal with a transition away from domestic coal use, increasing energy demand, increasing energy imports particularly from Russia, and dramatic increases in the cost of energy to consumers and industry in the 1990s as a result of decreasing subsidies and increases in energy prices in the 2000s. Security was largely subordinate to the task of transposing the main rules on internal energy markets. Liberalisation was limited as the state retained majority ownership of transmission system operators and energy companies for both electricity and gas.Footnote 122
Whilst the electricity market was formally liberalised in July 2007,Footnote 123 there were delays in transposing the Second and Third Energy Package Directives with gas lagging behind.Footnote 124 Poland was primarily concerned with how transitioning from a state-led to a market-led mode of governance may allow Russia (or ‘third countries’) to gain greater control of the Polish energy market.Footnote 125 During the negotiation of the Third Energy Package, Poland successfully supported an option allowing the potential restriction of transmission system ownership by third-country companies on the grounds of security of supply (the ‘Gazprom clause’),Footnote 126 though this was weakened after pressure from Germany.Footnote 127
This had a direct effect on Poland’s approach to energy security in its relations with the rest of the EU. Firstly, it prioritised external energy security during its Presidency in late 2011.Footnote 128 Secondly, Poland continued to lag in transposition of EU rules on energy market liberalisation.Footnote 129 The Russian threat was important in this process, although Bartlomiej Nowak argues that this was underpinned by opposition from the trade unions and large incumbent energy companies,Footnote 130 with policy actions defending the monopolistic status quo.Footnote 131
Thirdly, Poland was a key supporter of the successful September 2011 Commission proposal for an information exchange mechanism with regard to intergovernmental agreements between Member States and third countries,Footnote 132 in part to ‘banish the spectre of energy-related blackmail’.Footnote 133 This permitted the Commission to vet all intergovernmental agreements, and support member states at their request.Footnote 134 Fourthly, Poland successfully lobbied with the UK for guidelines rather than new legislation regarding shale gas exploration.Footnote 135
In response to gas supply disruptions the 2009 Energy Strategy stated that ‘state intervention in the energy sector will be used exclusively to ensure security’.Footnote 136 In 2014 the government reiterated the role of state intervention in providing energy and national security:
The security of the state requires … the state’s influence on its implementation by energy companies, which will make it possible to respond in a fast and effective manner in the case of occurrence of threats in energy markets. It is necessary for the state to control the key infrastructure of the fuel and energy sector and to expand the supervision and control of the wealth of geological resources of the state.Footnote 137
The proposal for a European Energy Security Treaty,Footnote 138 invoking the necessity of legally binding solidarity, failed. However, the Lisbon Treaty included an Energy Article with a commitment for Member States to act a ‘spirit of solidarity’ (Article 194). In 2014 the Polish prime minister successfully proposed the concept of a European Energy Union,Footnote 139 though its focus on security of supplies was diluted and it has evolved into a concept that attempts to harmonise policies on climate and energy policy, with the Polish proposal for a collective gas purchasing among member states accepted only as a possibility to be explored, and even then as voluntary, ‘during a crisis and where Member States are dependent on a single supplier’.Footnote 140
An important technical level factor in the understanding of energy security and role of the state in energy policy is the substantial shift in the geography of overall energy supply and demand, away from energy independence. Coal and lignite (brown coal) fuelled electricity generation, from domestic coal, accounted for 76 per cent of primary energy consumption in 1990.Footnote 141 By 2013 this figure was 50 per cent.Footnote 142 Domestic production is set to decrease by 2030, with production already halving since 1990.Footnote 143 Despite privatisation, the majority of mines and major companies remain state owned and the industry directly employs 100,000 and is concentrated in a particular region – Upper Silesia.Footnote 144 Donald Tusk referred to coal as ‘the strategic foundation’ of Poland’s energy security.Footnote 145 The country has become more dependent on the import of energy, and the Polish government has been resistant to efforts to create more ambitious environmental energy policy, and to liberalise the policy area.
In 1995 Poland was a net energy exporter,Footnote 146 though since there has been growing dependence on energy imports.Footnote 147 By the time of the first gas supply disruption in 2006 Poland was dependent on overall energy imports for 20 per cent of energy consumption. This figure had increased to 32 per cent by the second disruption in 2009 (before dropping to 29 per cent in 2014).Footnote 148 Russia supplied, through a long-term contract, 75 per cent of Polish gas in 2015.Footnote 149 The decline in coal production means these gas imports constitute a growing part of the country’s energy mix and significantly, the share of gas in the Polish energy mix has increased, from 4 per cent in 2004Footnote 150 to 16 per cent in 2014Footnote 151 and gas demand is forecast to increase by over 50 per cent by 2030, compared with the 2009 level.Footnote 152
In the gas sector specifically, high levels of state intervention have long been apparent, with the state-owned, vertically integrated company PGNiG responsible for 89 per cent of gas sales in 2014.Footnote 153 In 2014 there was only one transmission system operator (TSO) − OGP Gaz-System S.A. − a company wholly owned by the State Treasury and supervised by the Minister of Economy until late 2015.Footnote 154 This is explained by the strong desire to retain the state’s role in guaranteeing gas supplies.Footnote 155 The Polish regulator, URE, continued to set the maximum price while state-run distributor PGNiG sells gas to businesses and households; in response the EU Court of Justice ruled in September 2015 that Poland’s regulated prices for all business consumers breached EU Internal Gas Market rules.Footnote 156 In 2015, a dedicated Energy Ministry was established, concentrating the governance of energy policy previously divided between five separate ministries, and bringing state-run companies under the ministry’s control. The state retains a strong role in the Polish energy sector.
It is argued that the change in Poland’s energy mix has had a clear effect on energy policy, though it is the fact that dependence is increasing on Russia in particular that has been constructed as a threat in Poland. This dependence, especially in the gas sector, has been used as a resource in the discursive construction of energy security in Poland. EU accession has also given the country the opportunity to develop credibility and present itself as an expert on the issue, one that is well placed to represent national but also regional and EU interests relating to both energy security and foreign policy. Despite lower overall dependence on Russian gas in the Polish energy mix, directly reliant on this source for only 10 per cent of energy consumption, the pattern of strong reliance on Russia as a source of gas, and until recently little option to diversify supply sources, has been presented as a threat to Polish energy and also national, regional, and EU security.
While dependence on imports does not necessarily constitute a policy problem, as is clear in the UK case, it has been framed as problematic and threatening in the case of Poland. Part of the explanation is related to historical relations with Russia and concerns regarding Ukraine dating back at least a decade, when Poland positioned itself as a leader on the EU’s Eastern Partnership strategy that included Ukraine. However, the ‘securitisation’ of energy in Poland is not merely a discursive phenomenon. Whilst Poland has long been almost completely dependent on imports of gas from Russia this constituted a relatively small share of energy consumption in the 1990s. Since the turn of the century there has been a significant material increase in Russian gas imports as domestic coal production decreases. Securitisation thus occurred, enabled by state-led mode of energy governance in Poland, where the Polish state has played a central role in directing and implementing energy policy to achieve energy and political objectives.
Conclusion
This article has demonstrated that going beyond the Copenhagen School conceptualisation of securitisation has considerable potential for examining the construction of energy security issues and the potential for further energy policy integration in the EU. Combining elements of both the philosophical and sociological wings of securitisation studies we have sought to address two research questions. First, has gas been constructed as a security issue and, if so, what form do those constructions take? Second, have technical and economic factors played a role in shaping these attempts to construct gas as a security issue?
We have demonstrated that for the governments of both countries, energy security has become a policy priority and gas supplies have been constructed in terms of security. However, understandings of the extent, sources, and form of insecurity have differed substantially. In the case of Poland, these constructions have most closely followed a classic Copenhagen School logic of securitisation. Successive governments have repeatedly linked gas supplies with national security, making claims about the existential threat posed by its main supplier, Russia, potentially using energy as ‘a weapon’ to exploit Polish dependence on gas imports. In the case of the UK, by contrast, a logic of riskification is more evident. Government claims have centred on the UK’s potential vulnerability to risks emerging from its greater exposure to the European and international gas markets.
Contextual conditions have played an important role in this process in both cases. The UK and Poland have significantly different state-market relations, which have shaped the form that constructions of gas as a security issue have taken, leading to riskification in the former and securitisation in the latter. Prior to 2006, the UK adopted a completely market-led approach to the governance of gas, enabled by its ‘energy independence’. Investment decisions taken by the private sector in anticipation of the UK becoming import dependent altered the dynamics of the market, resulting in the government identifying risks that resulted in it developing a limited role in providing strategic direction to market participants to build the resilience of the market. This involved a greater level of governmental influence rather than a radical reassertion of state control.
In Poland the government asserted its role in ensuring the security of gas supplies through control of the monopoly gas transmissions systems operator, and the dominant gas importer and seller. This was justified on the grounds of a shift from ‘energy independence’ to an increasing dependence on gas imports from a single supplier: Russia. The government has played a leading role in attempting to diversify supplies and both developing and strengthening interconnections with neighbouring gas markets.
These twin findings have broader implications for debates about the potential for the development of a common EU energy policy. The Commission’s efforts to develop a market-led system of energy governance across the Member States could, if successful, permit a degree of consensus around the form of security construction. However, if we accept that gas supplies have been constructed as different forms of security issue in the UK and Poland, that these states are exemplars of different modes of energy governance among the EU Member States, and that such modes of energy governance are to an extent predisposed to different forms of security construction,Footnote 157 then there are significant challenges to reconciling these different forms of security construction and energy governance.
This poses major challenges for further integration because even if there is intersubjective agreement within the EU that gas supplies are a security issue, if the Member States cannot agree on what kind of security issue gas supplies represent then the development of a common approach for dealing with these threats and/or risks would appear unlikely. For proponents of further integration this is concerning, since claims about gas insecurity have long been central to the Commission’s attempts to develop a common EU energy policy. While the Commission has continued to argue in response to the crisis in Ukraine that, ‘more coordination of national energy policies is necessary to respond credibly to the challenge of energy security’,Footnote 158 there are clear limits to the ability of ‘security’ to mobilise support in favour of further integration.
Biographical information
Andrew Judge is a Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Glasgow. Currently, his major research focus is on the (re-)emergence of energy as a security and policy concern, particularly within the European Union and in its relations with Russia.
Tomas Maltby is a Lecturer in International Politics in the Department of Political Economy at King’s College London. His main research interests relate to EU politics and climate and energy policy including issues related to energy security, renewable policy and EU-Russia relations.
Acknowledgements
We are grateful to the three anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments, and would like to thank Anna Herranz-Surrallés, Anke Schmidt-Felzmann, Andreas Heinrich, and Amelia Hadfield for their helpful suggestions on earlier versions of this article. We would also like to thank the Public Policy and Regulation research group in the Department of Political Economy at King’s College London. As always, all errors and omissions are our own.
Ethical statement
This research adheres to the ethical standards, legal requirements of the study countries. There is no conflict of interest, and no financial support to declare.
