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Brussels, |
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EU Electric Strategy: Europe Turns to Power Imports to Fuel Its Green Transition
Kaja Kallas unveils a new EU energy-transition strategy: is it economic or political?
Brussels is resetting the Green Deal’s course—centering the transition on power-market rules and grid build-out to keep prices stable, shield industry, and scale electrification. It dovetails with a new international strategy linking climate ambition to competitiveness and security, and hints at more steps beyond the 2024 market-design reform. Yet one question looms: in the race to deliver, does mixing energy goals with foreign-policy ambitions store up trouble?
The European Commission is preparing a quiet but consequential recalibration of the energy transition: an electricity-first strategy that leans on power-market rules, interconnections, and flexibility to keep the Green Deal deliverable. The driver is as simple as it is uncomfortable: ambition has outpaced execution. National inertia, slow consumer adoption, and a manufacturing base squeezed by the loss of cheap energy have exposed the limits of “from carbon to electron by 2035” unless the system itself becomes faster, thicker, and more predictable. However, several aspects suggest that the strategy presented by Kaja Kallas—rather than the Energy Commissioner—could prove harmful for Europe’s power system and, by extension, its economy. Here is why
Over the last three years Europe learned two lessons at once. First, integration works: market coupling and cross-border trade prevented worse outcomes during supply shocks. Second, the same coupling amplifies exposure when megawatts fail to appear where and when needed—or when over-supply pushes parts of the grid into overload. The deeper the electrification, the less forgiving the system.
That’s why Brussels is centering the transition on grids, flexibility, and market design. Expect a push on strategic interconnectors (“energy highways”), cleaner capacity mechanisms, faster connection queues, and rules that monetise storage and demand response. None of this is flashy. All of it is decisive.
Over the last three years Europe learned two lessons at once. First, integration works: market coupling and cross-border trade prevented worse outcomes during supply shocks. Second, the same coupling amplifies exposure when megawatts fail to appear where and when needed—or when over-supply pushes parts of the grid into overload. The deeper the electrification, the less forgiving the system.
That’s why Brussels is centering the transition on grids, flexibility, and market design. Expect a push on strategic interconnectors (“energy highways”), cleaner capacity mechanisms, faster connection queues, and rules that monetise storage and demand response. None of this is flashy. All of it is decisive.
New inflection point: cutting Russian energy out of the mix
On 23 October 2025, EU countries endorsed a package that hard-wires a structural break from Russian energy--phasing out remaining natural-gas imports by end-2027 and banning Russian LNG (long-term contracts from January 2027, short-term within six months). This accelerates the need for an electricity-first transition built on market coupling, interconnections, storage and flexibility. In practice, it shortens the clock for operators and policymakers: the next two years must deliver real capacity, not just plans.
Political objective or energy objective?
Officially, this is about efficiency, adequacy and affordability. Politically, it’s also about industrial competitiveness and strategic autonomy. Read the subtext: if the EU can’t guarantee abundant, decarbonised electricity at stable prices, re-industrialisation stalls and public consent fades. That’s why the file appears at the highest political level: electricity is being positioned as both internal-market infrastructure and a foreign-policy instrument toward the Southern Mediterranean and the neighbourhood (notably Ukraine). Power lines and PPAs can bind partners as effectively as pipelines once did.
Why not just go nuclear?
Public acceptance for new nuclear remains mixed, and build times risk colliding with EU timelines. Several member states will extend or add capacity; others won’t. Brussels’ baseline therefore treats nuclear as part of the mix but not the short-term fix that unlocks system-wide decarbonisation. The practical near-term levers are: renewables at scale, grids that can carry them, storage to shape their value, and flexibility to keep the lights on without paying scarcity premia.
The numbers behind the strategy
The EU energy generation has shifted structurally toward wind and solar, with gas flexing as the balancing fuel and coal receding unevenly.
Intra-EU exchanges have grown alongside interconnection capacity, with seasonal patterns: winter imports concentrate in northern and southeastern corridors, while summer surpluses flow from southwest and Nordic regions. Averages can deceive: corridor-specific constraints and local bottlenecks determine whether a region pays a premium or exports value.
Intra-EU exchanges have grown alongside interconnection capacity, with seasonal patterns: winter imports concentrate in northern and southeastern corridors, while summer surpluses flow from southwest and Nordic regions. Averages can deceive: corridor-specific constraints and local bottlenecks determine whether a region pays a premium or exports value.
Who wins, who worries
- Municipal utilities & DSOs gain from clearer flexibility markets and predictable EU calendars but face a heavier workload: data, forecasting, procurement, and board-level risk governance.
- Energy communities can thrive with consistent rules for storage and local trading—if permitting and connection queues stop dragging.
- Industry benefits from cheap green hours and long-term PPAs; it suffers in scarcity windows unless hedging tools improve.
- Consumers want reliability first, then fairness. If reforms deliver both, consent follows.
Conclusions
The EU Commission pitch is, at heart, an electricity-first shortcut: tighten interconnections, ramp up cross-border trade and lean on imported power to keep the transition moving while Europe’s own build-out is stuck in permits and paperwork—much of it born of EU rules. The logic is blunt but clear. Time is short, public acceptance of new nuclear is tepid, and industry is straining without cheap, abundant energy.
But this new strategy splices two ambitions that don’t always sit well together. One is political: turning electricity into a tool of foreign policy with the Southern Mediterranean and the EU’s eastern neighborhood. The other is strictly energy-system: importing more power to sidestep Europe’s domestic bottlenecks. Foreign policy isn’t an exclusive EU competence; hitching the bloc’s energy—and by extension its economy—to diplomatic alchemy from the Berlaymont risks mortgaging the transition to outcomes Brussels doesn’t fully control.
There’s a credibility question, too. If, a few years from now, Europe gravitates toward safer and cheaper options than today’s diplomatic constructions, what happens to the EU’s standing and security? We’ve already lived through over-dependence first on oil, then on gas. Electricity adds a harsher constraint: you can’t stockpile it like fossil fuels or nuclear fuel. Betting heavily on imports from historically unstable suppliers raises exposure just as electrification deepens.
If this is to be more than speed on paper, the course correction needs hard safeguards: genuine permitting reform so imports are a bridge, not a destiny; real redundancy in storage and demand response to compensate for the absence of strategic reserves; clear lines between foreign-policy gambits and system security; and transparency on who pays for the new risks. Otherwise, Europe could swap one vulnerability for another—faster, perhaps, but not safer.
© Copyright eEuropa Belgium 2020-2025
But this new strategy splices two ambitions that don’t always sit well together. One is political: turning electricity into a tool of foreign policy with the Southern Mediterranean and the EU’s eastern neighborhood. The other is strictly energy-system: importing more power to sidestep Europe’s domestic bottlenecks. Foreign policy isn’t an exclusive EU competence; hitching the bloc’s energy—and by extension its economy—to diplomatic alchemy from the Berlaymont risks mortgaging the transition to outcomes Brussels doesn’t fully control.
There’s a credibility question, too. If, a few years from now, Europe gravitates toward safer and cheaper options than today’s diplomatic constructions, what happens to the EU’s standing and security? We’ve already lived through over-dependence first on oil, then on gas. Electricity adds a harsher constraint: you can’t stockpile it like fossil fuels or nuclear fuel. Betting heavily on imports from historically unstable suppliers raises exposure just as electrification deepens.
If this is to be more than speed on paper, the course correction needs hard safeguards: genuine permitting reform so imports are a bridge, not a destiny; real redundancy in storage and demand response to compensate for the absence of strategic reserves; clear lines between foreign-policy gambits and system security; and transparency on who pays for the new risks. Otherwise, Europe could swap one vulnerability for another—faster, perhaps, but not safer.
© Copyright eEuropa Belgium 2020-2025
Stay tuned to get early updates on the Commission’s upcoming initiatives on this dossier.
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