Energy in the EU 2010 Enlargement Progress Reports: How Balkan Countries Compare
Energy in the EU 2010 Enlargement Progress Reports: How Balkan Countries Compare

Summary/Abstract: Each year, the European Union publishes an enlargement strategy document describing the main objectives of the enlargement process for the coming year, as well as progress or opinion reports on all the candidate countries and potential candidate countries. The EU’s 2010 strategy and progress report provides several interesting updates concerning the main changes and reforms implemented in the energy sector of the reviewed countries (most of them from Southeast Europe), and makes some recommendations regarding the steps that should be taken by them in the future. So far, the EU strategy document’s findings are too fresh to have created any significant response from private or public stakeholders. Nevertheless, a quick analysis of the document can prove valuable for assessing how the different countries are performing in the energy sector relative to each other, and from the EU’s rather rigid perspective. And what the EU perceives will in time have ramifications for larger energy developments within the region. For their part, private companies already know the issues of the energy sector in Southeast Europe, where themes such as state dominance and corruption continue to be mentioned. The EU’s progress reports, though somewhat benign in their phrasing, are commonly understood as a means of putting pressure on the governments in the region to carry out reforms- while also serving as an external benchmark that can be cited when governments seek to compare themselves favorably to their neighbors. in the ongoing competition to attract foreign investment and technologies.

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