ABSTRACT
Although the EU and its member states currently place a lot of emphasis on their relations with energy supply countries, the focus on external energy policy is rather new as these actors have traditionally focused on the development of the internal energy market. This chapter discusses the development of the EU’s approach towards energy policy, the formal establishment of which can be traced back only to the late 1980s. The real development of the policy started in the 1990s with the liberalization process that was later viewed as a suitable solution to external energy issues as well. By exporting the internal energy market rules, the EU wanted to improve the energy sectors in neighbouring countries, thus supporting its goals connected to energy imports. The eastern enlargement and the 2009 gas crisis were two milestones that prompted the development of the external dimension of EU energy policy.
