From Nord Stream to Versailles: The EU/Russia Gas Divorce

This article will study the policy process that resulted in the EU deciding a phaseout of Russian Natural Gas. When energy prices started to go up, back in September 2021, EU policymakers focused their response on the Union’s electricity market. Yet in March 2022, as the war in Ukraine started and the energy crisis worsened, they had frozen their talks on the market’s reform and instead opted for a phase-out of Russian Gas importation. Not only did the EU’s crisis response totally shifted in the middle of the crisis, but it went in a difficult direction for the Union: in 2021, Russia was providing 40% of the EU’ gas supply; in 2024, it still provided 18% of the Union’s gas supply showing the EU struggles to implement its decision. This article will investigate why the European Union decided to respond to the energy crisis by phasing out Russian gas. It will mobilize Kingdon’s (1984) Multiple Streams Framework to trace the process that resulted in this decision, relying on expert interviews with EU officials as well as media coverage of the crisis response. It will investigate how different solutions to the crisis pushed by different policy entrepreneur coalitions emerged and struggled to impose their own understanding of the crisis as the Union tried to make sense of what was going on.