Ahead of June 2024 European elections and against the backdrop of growing geopolitical and geoeconomic frictions, if not tensions, between the EU and some of its largest trade partners, not least based on the external impacts of the European Green Deal (EGD), Ifri chose to collect views and analyses from leading experts from China, India, South Africa, Türkiye and the United States of America (US) on how they assess bilateral relations in the field of energy and climate, and what issues and opportunities they envisage going forward.

A key highlight from these contributions is that the EGD matters as it is taken seriously by most trading partners. While it is a source of frictions, if not tensions, the European Union (EU) actually has an influence on some of the policy dynamics in these countries. Also, the issues of economic security and industrial policy have now become pivotal in the discussions on energy and climate policies, which tends to reinforce further the geopolitical dimension of the EU energy transition. As EU’s policies have a growing external impact, and as EU’s energy transition process is increasingly affected by policies put in place in the rest of the world, the next European political cycle should put a robust external energy and climate strategy among its priorities, be it towards the neighborhood as well as larger trade partners.

About the Authors:

Marc-Antoine Eyl-Mazzega joined Ifri’s Center for Energy & Climate as a Director in September 2017.Prior to joining IFRI, he spent six years at the International Energy Agency (IEA), notably as Russia & Sub-Saharan Africa Programme Manager where he conducted oil and gas market analyses.

Diana-Paula Gherasim worked as Advisor on Renewables and Lead on the 2030 energy & climate framework in Europe at Eurelectric, the European association representing national associations in the field of electricity from across all EU Member States prior to joining IFRI.

Kevin Jianjun Tu is a Non-Resident Fellow at Ifri’s Center for Energy & Climate, he is also the managing director of Agora Energy Transition China, and an adjunct professor at the School of Environment of Beijing Normal University.