ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the political arena that provides the empirical evidence of the way to EU interacts with the BICS countries. The EU-Brazil Dialogue Support Facility claims that the EU and Brazil share much common ground as far as energy is concerned due to their large internal markets with high energy demand and their acknowledgement of the potential of renewable energies by also spearheading standards for countries in other regions. The interaction and exchange of the actors involved in the Brazil-EU energy dialogue, and their importance, can be explored using social network analysis. The network density block matrices clarify the remote position of EU actors. In terms of the importance network public actors on both sides regard each other to be important, but the South African non-state actors attribute less importance to the EU actors and vice versa. Indeed, relations with some Member States seem much more grounded and more significant in terms of economic interests.
