Nabucco Swept Away by South Stream: Was the Securitization of the Russian Pipeline Successful?

Nabucco Swept Away by South Stream: Was the Securitization of the Russian Pipeline Successful?

EU

Nabucco

South Stream

energy security

securitization

This article aims to determine if the European Commission was successfulin the securitization of the Russian South Stream pipeline. The Commissiontried to convince the participating Member States to abandon the SouthStream project in favor of the competing Nabucco pipeline. The discursiveanalysis showed that all the participating countries accepted the security ofsupplies as a referent object. Nevertheless, they did not accept certainmeasures advocated by the Commission, i.e. a supranational approach toenergy security and amendments of the intergovernmental agreementsconcluded with Russia. Instead, the participating Member States were usingtheir alternative discourses in order to resist this securitization. TheEuropean Commission was able to stop the South Stream project onlythrough a direct, non-discursive intervention against Bulgaria, which, afterthe start of the infringement procedure, suspended its participation in theproject. The other participating countries accepted this intervention, yetthey did not support it.

Odintsov, Nikita

Czech Journal of International Relations; Vol. 54 No. 3 (2019); 49-69

2788-2993

2788-2985

10.32422/mv.54.3

Institute of International Relations Prague

2019-09-01

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0

application/pdf

eng

info:eu-repo/semantics/article

info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

Research Articles