The EU Energy Transition in a Geopoliticizing World.

Amidst heightened global power rivalries, the geopolitical aspects of the energy transition are taking centre stage, with even liberal-minded countries growing wary about foreign investment in the energy sector and the dependencies created by global value chains of green technologies. Building on current debates on the 'geopoliticization' of foreign economic policies, this paper sets out a conceptual framework to assess the extent to which the energy transition is becoming geopoliticized in the European Union (EU) and its impact on international energy relations. Theoretically, the paper makes the case for considering geopoliticization as a missing link in the study of politicization and securitization in International Relations, allowing for a more fine-grained diagnosis of current trends and their likely evolution.