Europe’s energy security discussed in Ostrava

The Czech city of Ostrava is hosting a two-day conference on how to improve the security of Europe's energy supplies, an issue that's been pushed to the foreground by the recent gas-crisis. The Czech Republic currently holds the revolving presidency of the EU, and energy security is one of the country’s priorities for the next six months. This EU conference focuses mainly on electricity, but it's all interlinked - for a start, more and more European countries are using gas-fired power stations to create electricity, so when the gas is cut off, it can cause real problems. Our correspondent Rob Cameron is in Ostrava. Earlier, I asked him whether energy was currently at the top of the EU’s agenda:

Photo: Archive of Radio Prague

“It is, very much so, and it is also a top priority for the Czech presidency of the European Union for the next six months. It is one of the ‘three E’s’ – energy and energy security. There will be a number of conferences held in the Czech Republic and in Brussels in the next few months about just how to make Europe’s energy supplies more reliable, more diverse, and to avoid a situation like we had in the first few weeks of this year, when the dispute between Ukraine and Russia left so much of Europe without natural gas.”

So, it’s a big priority then, but just how exactly does the Czech presidency propose to improve energy security?

Alexandr Vondra on the conference, photo: CTK

“Well, it’s a long and winding road I think towards finding a solution that is acceptable to everyone, and a solution which is going to work. The Czech presidency is very keen to push forward with the Nabucco pipeline that would bring in natural gas from the Caspian Sea to Europe via Turkey, bypassing Russia altogether. That is just one option though, and that would only supply something like ten percent of Europe’s natural gas needs, there obviously needs to be a number of solutions bundled together to address Europe’s energy insecurity. And there is not a consensus, yet, of exactly what those proposals should entail.”

So what are the different camps, as it were, with all of these different European states having different ideas about how to push forward?

“Well there does seem to be something of a rift opening up in Europe, particularly between Germany and the Czech presidency. The German Chancellor Angela Merkel actually has sent a letter to the Czech prime minister Mirek Topolánek and the president of the commission, Jose Manuel Barroso, saying that all 27 EU members need to support the Nord Stream pipeline, which is going to run under the Baltic Sea and supply Russian gas to Europe via Germany, and of course, not everybody is happy with that pipeline, in particular Poland and the Baltic states. And the prime minister of the Czech Republic said earlier this week, in fact, that Nord Stream actually threatened the Nabucco pipeline. So I think there is some way to go before the Czech EU presidency and their EU partners are singing from the same hymn sheet, when it comes to the security of Europe’s gas supplies and indeed electricity.”