The Americans brought shale, the Saudis brought spare capacity, Russia brought pipelines, China brought cash, and Iran brought the Strait of Hormuz. Europe arrived late with a climate taxonomy, a carbon border mechanism and a 74-page consultation document. By then, someone had already taken its chair.
Europe didn’t lose its seat overnight. It regulated, taxed and moralised its way out of the game while others kept drilling, refining, trading and securing supply. Brussels assumed oil was becoming yesterday’s business. Unfortunately, geopolitics never received the memo, and the rest of the table kept playing without us.
The deeper problem was governance. Europe confused regulation with strategy and procedure with power. Every crisis produced another framework, committee and consultation, while energy security became somebody else’s problem. Decisions were fragmented, accountability blurred, and ideology often outran industrial reality. Brussels became excellent at writing rules for a game it was no longer playing.