Focus Areas

Russia and other energy-supplying countries are using their energy resources to fuel antidemocratic internal and external policies, and as a main client the European Union is paying. Europe’s foreign-policy independence is limited by its dependency on energy resources from Russia and other instable states. Access to energy resources is a major crisis factor already, and will grow in the future with increased competition for energy resource from China and India.

The best way to fight energy dependency, double standards, and also climate change is to reduce Europe’s reliance on fossil fuels and move to a carbon-low business model. Energy and climate security will be a top issue for the EU in the next years and it has the potential to become the unifying project the EU needs to get out of its current identity crisis. A common energy and climate policy appeals to the European public, creates jobs and growth, and maintains Europe’s global competitiveness based on innovation.

OSI-Brussels is a co-founder of the Clean and Fair Energy coalition, which unites a range of environment, development, and human rights NGOs and which calls upon the EU for ambitious action to tackle energy and climate security.

Revenue transparency in the energy sector is an overarching OSI priority. OSI-Brussels is the Brussels leg of the Publish What You Pay Campaign and, in 2007, advocated for the inclusion of the revenue transparency standard EITI in relevant EU policies and funding instruments, such as the EU Energy Policy, the EU-Africa Strategy, the EU Central Asia Strategy and the EU position in the G8.