♠ Posted by Emmanuel in
Europe,
Neoliberalism
at 3/08/2007 12:06:00 AM
One of my students brought the existence of the
Athens Process to my attention. It is basically an energy trading scheme for electricity, petroleum, and gas among states in "southeast Europe" including Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Macedonia, Greece, Italy, Romania, Serbia and Montenegro, Turkey and UNMIK-Kosovo. Romania, for instance, can draw on
nuclear power. Many of the former Eastern-bloc countries in this agreement hope that it can provide the foundations for eventual EU membership. Just as the European Coal and Steel Commission (
ECSC) was an energy-related agreement that led to the eventual formation of the EU , so do current participants aim for broader inclusion in European economic affairs.
Fast-forward over fifty years from the creation of the ECSC and it is striking how its objectives mirror those of the Athens Process or
Energy Community: providing a unified market for [energy] products and lifting restrictions on imports and exports.
These liberalizing steps towards market integration are timeless. In some ways, this is a "neoliberal" project involving deregulation, privatization, and marketization. As always, however, it is more a matter of implementation than conceptualization that counts. For that reason, some "neoliberal" projects fail whereas others succeed. If gradually implemented and carefully monitored, the rigors of market discipline and habituation may be successfully imbibed by ex-Soviet-bloc Athens Process participants. Hopefully, lessons learned from the Enron deregulation
debacle in California will be heeded before they have a chance to repeat themselves here. Doubters may ask: If American institutions were unable to prevent such a fracas, then what chance do these fledgling democracies have of successfully dealing with complex forms of energy provision? Still, the idea behind this agreement has good historical precedent in the ECSC and it is definitely timely given currently high energy prices and uncertainties involving supplies from Russia--which is keen on using energy as a
political weapon. We wish the Athens Process well.
One of my students brought the existence of the Athens Process to my attention. It is basically an energy trading scheme for electricity, petroleum, and gas among states in "southeast Europe" including Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Macedonia, Greece, Italy, Romania, Serbia and Montenegro, Turkey and UNMIK-Kosovo. Romania, for instance, can draw on nuclear power. Many of the former Eastern-bloc countries in this agreement hope that it can provide the foundations for eventual EU membership. Just as the European Coal and Steel Commission (ECSC) was an energy-related agreement that led to the eventual formation of the EU , so do current participants aim for broader inclusion in European economic affairs.