EU leaders have been put on the defensive after development charity Oxfam accused them of turning a blind eye to €9.5 trillion hidden in European tax havens. Oxfam, which lambasted what it described as EU "hypocrisy" ...

Energy and tax policy are on next WEEK’s agenda as European leaders gather in Brussels for a summit on Wednesday (22 May). Member states want to harvest an estimated €1 trillion lost every year to tax evasion. It is ...

The shale gas revolution has taken its time to arrive in Europe. But after years of watching the US plunge head-first into natural gas exploration and of reaping the rewards, Europe's politicians are now deciding ...

Bailed-out Cyprus should reunite in order to boost its struggling economy, EU economic affairs commissioner Olli Rehn said on Wednesday (8 May). "It is worth recalling that the reunification of the island would give a ...

“As you can see, I have no electricity at home at this moment,” says Yousef via Skype. “I have a fuel generator that I can use during the power cuts. If I run out of fuel, like now, I have a transformer connected to a ...

The Emissions Trading System (ETS) is the EU’s flagship climate policy and it is sinking fast. The stated aim is to put a price on carbon, providing a financial incentive for companies to cut their pollution and, ...

Carbon emissions in the EU fell by 1.4 percent in 2012, raising hope the bloc will hit its targets on global warming gasses. The European Commission released the figures on Tuesday (2 April), with data from 89 percent ...

It is no secret that Russian dominance of European natural gas markets has splintered the Union. The imperative of having enough heat or cooking fuel in the winter has put countries – especially in central and eastern ...

The European Commission has said it would welcome joint control of Ukraine's EU-transit gas pipelines by Russian energy giant Gazprom. Energy commissioner Gunther Oettinger told Ukrainian daily Kommersant-Ukraine in an ...

Tuesday’s EUobserver article “No benefits from EU energy projects for 150 years” seems to imply that energy efficiency projects are a waste of money. CAN Europe would rather the article focused on the real problem: the ...

EU energy efficiency projects in member states are too expensive and have little environmental benefit, says a new report by the European Court of Auditors (ECA). The study, released on Monday (14 January), found that ...

A lively disagreement on energy and a protest by four topless women marked the end of the EU-Russia summit in Brussels on Friday (21 December). In a rerun of a similar dispute between Russian leader Vladimir Putin and ...

The recent revelation that Azerbaijan has pursued a policy of bestowing gifts of caviar on parliamentarians and officials at the Council of Europe comes as no surprise to those who follow the interactions of the Council ...

Azerbaijan says it might sell up to 50 billion cubic metres (bcm) of gas a year to the EU in future. But it wants more than just money in return. Rovnag Abdullayev, the head of the country's top energy firm, Socar, told ...

The EU intends to cap the contribution made by crop-based biofuels to its renewable energy target under draft legislation tabled on Wednesday (17 October) by the European Commission. The use of food-based biofuels will ...

Greece is temporarily blocking an EU gas embargo on Iran. But the big question is: are EU sanctions hurting or helping Iranian leader Ali Khamenei? The gas ban is to be agreed by foreign ministers on Monday (15 October ...

A European Parliament vote on the EU budget for 2013 and a multi-billion euro European Commission proposal to create more jobs dominate this week’s agenda. On Tuesday, the commission will unveil its so-called Connecting ...

MEPs on the European Parliament's environment committee have adopted a report highlighting the dangers of shale gas. The vote on Wednesday (19 September) - by a whopping 63 against one with one abstention - sets the ...

When the state-owned grid operator in Slovakia in November 2009 announced it would start accepting solar power plant applications, nobody knew about it. “The announcement was quietly placed at the bottom corner of [the ...

Russian President Vladimir Putin has passed a law blocking Gazprom from normal co-operation with EU anti-trust officials. Referring to potential EU-Gazprom exchange of information on alleged price-fixing, his new decree ...

Europe’s solar energy industry has been shaken by strong competition from China. EUobserver examines whether it has got what it takes to survive.

Europe today may not enjoy the envy of the world as it continues to struggle with debts and deficits, but when it comes to solar energy, according to one US entrepreneur, Europe can be proud of itself. It is not by ...

In one hour, the sun casts upon the earth more energy than we, the whole of humankind, consume in a year. It is a favourite of solar energy enthusiasts, as is the truism that all renewable energy sources - wind, falling ...

On Monday 27 August, German electronics company Bosch announced it was closing a factory for solar panel materials in the central town of Erfurt. The day before, German solar panel manufacturer Q.Cells, a market leader ...

The Kremlin has started putting pressure on the EU for a friendly "settlement" on Gazprom one day after the European Commission said the affair is a purely commercial matter. Speaking in an interview with the Wall ...

Apart from those spearheading the complaint, people within the European solar sector have expressed little enthusiasm for an EU investigation into the possible dumping of solar panels from China which may result in the ...

The European Commission says its probe into suspected price-fixing by Gazprom has nothing to do with EU-Russia relations. But Gazprom says it does. Commission spokesman Antoine Colombani in Brussels on Wednesday (5 ...

The EU has said Russia's Gazprom might be guilty of price-fixing in Europe in a move set to test political relations. The Europan Commission on Tuesday (4 September) said it has launched a probe into three "suspected" ...

China and the EU are facing a trade war after a group of European solar panel producers this week lodged an anti-dumping complaint, sparking immediate threats of retaliation. The complaint comes from Germany's ...

An aide to the Lithuanian President has said Russia is intent on keeping the Baltic countries inside its energy supply grip. "For them [Russia], it is a vital interest. In Russia's military strategy, Russia defines ...

Seen through a Brussels-based prism, it is easy to forget just how far to the east Cyprus is. Lebanon, Syria and Israel are all within a couple of hundred kilometres. To its north is Turkey, to its south Egypt. To fit ...

China might impound European aircraft if Chinese airlines are punished for missing Friday's (15 June) deadline on CO2 data, a top executive has said. Wei Zhenzhong, the head of the China Air Transport Association, a ...

With only a couple of weeks left in its six-month EU presidency, Denmark is pressing lawmakers in Brussels to finalise an energy saving deal to reduce overall energy consumption by 20 percent by 2020. The Danish EU ...

Vladimir Putin has made clear that he will not budge an inch on Syria ahead of an EU-Russia summit. Speaking in separate press events in Berlin and Paris on Friday (1 June), the Russian leader ruled out lifting his UN ...

Warsaw's latest battle against efforts to 'green' Europe's economy is being played out in the European Parliament's regional affairs committee. Polish-designed technical texts could kill the environment-friendly ...

The EU-endorsed Nabucco pipeline project is shrinking and might vanish by the end of June. When executives from five energy firms - Botas, Bulgargaz, Mol, OMV and Transgaz - ate dinner in Vienna in October 2002 after ...

Big Oil is on the warpath. It hates the new transparency provisions in the EU Accounting and Transparency Directives which would require all EU-listed oil and mining companies to publish what they pay to governments ...

Europe is on the verge of a global resource crunch, and it is far from ready to tackle it. Over the next two days the European Parliament will vote upon recommendations to improve Europe’s resource efficiency levels. ...

The Spanish oil and gas giant Repsol-YPF filed a lawsuit against Argentina at a US district court in Manhattan on Tuesday (15 May) for nationalising its majority-owned stake in the energy company YPF. Repsol Chairman ...

The European Commission has indicated that China is responsible for a ban on media questions to vice premier Li Keqiang during his two-day visit to the EU capital. Commission spokeswoman Pia Ahrenkilde on Wednesday (2 ...

From drinks receptions to work meetings abroad, there is no average day for Kerstin Duhme, managing director of FTI Consulting. Her role is to act as what she calls a "facilitator" between industry and law-makers in ...

When Argentine President Cristina Fernandez announced she was ordering the partial nationalisation of oil company YPF (Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales) - owned by the Spanish oil company Repsol (16 April) - she reaped ...

Renewable energy in both developing and industrialised nations is essential to combating global poverty, the European Commission told reporters in Brussels on Thursday (12 April). "Investing in access to clean energy in ...

A North Sea platform, owned by French oil giant Total, has been leaking gas off the coast of Scotland for the past three days. All 238 personnel have been evacuated from the Elgin platform, which is located 240 km off ...

EU member states have failed to name tar sands a high polluting energy source following intense lobbying by oil companies and Canada but green groups and the European Commission hope the politicisation of the discussion ...

Germany's solar power industry could cool as Berlin plans to cut subsidies in a sector whose energy capacity output has more than doubled the government’s projected target. German authorities want to slash up to 30 ...

Less "sexy" than other policy areas, EU energy efficiency efforts are off track due to squabbling among member states on what measures to implement. But the Danish EU presidency will try to reach an agreement on a new ...

Every year, the same ritual repeats itself in the European energy debate. The cooler the temperatures outside, the more heated the debates over natural gas supply security become. For years now, discussions have been ...

People like me love conspiracy theories. This is especially true with ones involving Russia. But since the end of last year, it seems that at least one of these theories is coming true. On 29 November 2011, the Gazprom ...