Convergenze e divergenze: politiche industriali e politiche energetiche in Europa

The contribution examines the role played by European energy companies in the debates surrounding the definition of a common energy policy within the European Community, a process that historiography has traditionally analysed by privileging the positions of national governments. Focusing in particular on state-owned enterprises, the contribution aims to shed light on these companies' orientations towards European integration and the way in which they found in the Community framework a suitable setting for defending their specific interests through cooperation, both vis-à-vis private competitors and, in some cases, their own national governments.

A determining role in this process was played by the Centre européen de l'entreprise publique (CEEP), whose main actions and positions on energy policy are briefly examined. Alongside this form of institutional representation, however, the contribution also examines other initiatives of direct cooperation between companies, aimed at the shared elaboration of policy positions. In particular: the coordination between ERAP, ENI and Deminex in the second half of the 1960s, to assert the role of European companies in relation to the Commission's first proposals for a Community energy policy; the joint initiative of five companies which, in close dialogue with the Commission, sought common responses to the oil crisis of the 1970s; and finally, the coordination activities among European natural gas companies in response to the liberalisation proposals of the 1980s and 1990s.

Through this reconstruction, based on primary sources from the Historical Archives of the European Union and corporate archives (Archivio Storico Eni, Archives Nationales du Monde du Travail, Archives du Groupe Total), the contribution aims to demonstrate the long-term agency of energy companies in shaping European energy policy.

This contribution reconstructs the history of the construction of the Kainji Dam on the Niger River by Impregilo, whose works took place between 1964 and 1968. The project was situated within Nigeria's development plan, financed by the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) through the creation of an advisory group participated in by the United States and major European countries, including Italy.

However, Italian reluctance to participate actively in Nigeria's development plan placed Impregilo in a very precarious position with respect to the award of the contract, for which it had initially been favored. Ultimately, Rome, also under pressure from IBRD officials and the Nigerian government, financed the project with a loan of 25 million dollars. The works were thus awarded to Impregilo, which completed the dam in 1968 in the midst of the Biafran War. Even before the outbreak of the conflict, the deterioration of Nigeria's political climate had repercussions at the Kainji construction sites, where in September 1966 ethnic violence occurred, resulting in the killing of Igbo personnel and the evacuation of survivors.

The contribution will thus focus on the diplomatic contacts that led to the awarding of the contract to Impregilo, through an analysis of documentary material from the archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Bank of Italy, Mediobanca, and the World Bank.

The objective of this contribution is to understand how industrial and energy policies have interacted with environmental policy, beginning with the latter's emergence in the 1970s and extending to the recent Green Deal. From the initial stages of its formulation, environmental policy had among its principal objectives its integration with other European policies. The relationship with industrial and energy policies emerged immediately: its very origin was linked to the "problems of modern industrial society", of which pollution was the most evident; almost immediately, the connection with resource scarcity also became apparent, manifested through the energy crises of the same decade.

For a long time, however, environmental policy remained at the margins, in a secondary position relative to the major themes of industrial and energy policy. Only recently, following the emergence of climate change as a key theme of environmental concerns, did a phase of increasing weight of environmental policy begin, reaching its apex in 2019 with the launch of the European Green Deal, in which climate change was considered the fulcrum of Europe's entire political strategy, also providing direction for industrial and energy policies.

The contribution thus seeks to understand how environmental policy, from the margins of the integration process, has reached the centre of European political discourse, identifying the principal stages that have led it to assume a guiding role for industrial and energy policies. To do this, it will primarily utilize two types of documentary sources: documents produced by the Commission, in particular the Environmental Action Programmes, will enable identification of the political direction traced by Europe and the relationships between the three policies; banking documentation from the European Investment Bank and documentation relating to the LIFE programme (a fund dedicated since 1992 to climate and environmental objectives) will instead allow observation of how the types of financing for industrial and energy enterprises have changed as attention to environmental issues evolved.

The development of natural gas infrastructures is commonly framed as the outcome of state-level strategies, with national governments and national (or international) energy companies portrayed as the main drivers. However the Transmediterranean pipeline (Transmed), which connects the Algerian gas fields to Italy, and is one of the main arteries of gas provisions for the country, challenges this state-centric perspective, by being a major infrastructure built in large part thanks to the persistence of the local Sicilian government, and in particular the Ente Minerario Siciliano (EMS), the Sicilian Mining Authority. 

The EMS championed the construction of the Transmed, which would connect Algeria to Italy by passing through Sicily, against the solution preferred by ENI (the Italian hydrocarbon company) to use LNG for transports, which would have been based on terminal points mostly in the North of the country, bypassing Sicily. The Transmed was perceived by Sicilian authorities as a unique opportunity for the economic development of the country, and they acted as a fundamental bridge (both metaphorically and physically) between Italy and Algeria, particularly when ENI abandoned the negotiations for supplies after a dispute with Sonatrach, the Algerian oil and gas company. 

The paper reconstructs the role of Sicily and the EMS in the construction of the Transmed, and its importance in the process of “metanizzazione”, the national strategy for natural gas rollout which started after the first oil shock as an important part of the new national energy strategy. It reconstructs the glocal nature of the Italian-Algerian energy relations in the 1970-1995 period, and the role played by Sicily in shaping these relations. 

By examining the interactions between national and local energy companies, as well as these companies with the State level, the paper shows that the Sicilian case reveals a more complex governance structure of energy markets, where regional agencies can affect long-term infrastructural choices and international geopolitical alignments.

This contribution examines the European Community's attempts to develop a common energy policy between the first and second oil crises of the 1970s, and investigates the reasons for their substantial failure. The 1973 crisis represented a crucial moment in the redefinition of internal equilibria within the Community, as it exposed the energy vulnerability of the Nine and the potential - and consequent limitations - of a collective response. Through extensive archival research conducted at the Historical Archives of the European Union and drawing on national and diplomatic sources, this contribution reconstructs the Community debate on energy security, relations with producing countries, and the role of European institutions in managing the crisis.

The analysis demonstrates how the failure to consolidate a common energy policy resulted from structural fragility in European cooperation in this sector, exacerbated by political and institutional divergences among Member States. The contribution focuses on three fundamental dynamics. First, the reluctance of Member States to transfer effective energy competencies to the Commission, despite frequent appeals for a common response. Second, it examines the establishment of the International Energy Agency, which shifted the centre of Western energy coordination outside the Community, reducing the EC's capacity to present itself as a primary space for policy formulation. Finally, the contribution analyses how the absence of a shared strategy encouraged progressive externalisation of crisis management toward parallel international forums, such as the Conference on International Economic Cooperation.

The contribution thus argues that the 1973 oil crisis exposed the contradictions inherent in Community energy cooperation: on the one hand, energy appeared as a domain where common action was deemed necessary; on the other, it remained firmly anchored to national priorities. In this sense, the period 1973-1979 constitutes a privileged vantage point from which the energy question emerges not merely as a sectoral issue, but as a test of the European Community's political capacity to present itself as a unified and cohesive actor in a profoundly changing international landscape.