Geopolitics: France and Germany and Their Divergent Approaches to Achieving Energy Security

Luis Augusto Medeiros Rutledge Energy Geopolitics

The President of the United States seeks to shape European policy according to his own strategic interests, drawing on the structural contradictions that run through the European Union—especially the recurring tensions between France and Germany, the two central pillars of the bloc’s political and economic machinery.

In this context, American influence over European policy becomes particularly evident in the fields of energy, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and continental security. The war in Ukraine has reinforced Europe’s dependence on the United States’ military umbrella, while simultaneously redirecting the continent’s energy supply—previously heavily anchored in Russian gas—toward alternative sources, including American liquefied natural gas (LNG).

This reconfiguration has strengthened strategic convergence with Washington, but it has also exposed internal divergences between France and Germany: while Paris advocates greater European strategic autonomy, Berlin tends to prioritize the solidity of a bond that ensures greater energy security. Thus, by exploiting these asymmetries, the United States preserves its centrality in Europe’s security architecture and maintains significant capacity to influence the bloc’s geopolitical trajectory.

There are disagreements, if not contradictions, between Berlin and Paris, embodied in the political figures of German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and French President Emmanuel Macron, on issues such as how to deal with the war in Ukraine and how to reduce energy dependence. Added to this is another issue that grows stronger by the day: the fluctuations in U.S. domestic politics under the current administration of Donald Trump.

Today, since the creation of the European Union, France and Germany have been its main pillars. Germany remains the great economic and industrial power, but who said that this is enough to eliminate the current differences?

The connection between Franco-German divergences and the geopolitics of energy became even more evident after the war in Ukraine, which triggered a structural reconfiguration of the European energy system.

In October 2025, my article “Geopolitics: Impacts controller on Trade Relations and the Energy Sector,” published by the Center for International Relations Studies (CERES), had already signaled fragile governance within the European Union in the chessboard of energy geopolitics. A mere shift in the influential—and forcibly imperialist—flag allowed the United States to take Russia’s place as the largest supplier of liquefied natural gas (LNG) to European countries.

Under this new energy axis, geopolitics underwent a realignment that positioned the United States as an increasingly solid central actor, with American LNG representing 60% of the European Union’s imports at the beginning of 2026.

Nearly four years after the onset of Europe’s energy crisis at the end of 2021, the continent has moved from an emergency response phase toward a complete restructuring of its system. However, the European Union is still not out of danger; fragility remains, and progress toward clean, secure, and affordable supplies is advancing at an uneven pace from one country to another.

European energy policy must now be analyzed within an unstable and competitive geopolitical environment. In 2021, approximately 62.5% of the energy available in the bloc was imported, with particularly critical levels for oil and natural gas.

From a geopolitical perspective, these numbers reveal three structural transformations. First, energy has ceased to be merely an economic issue and has once again assumed strategic centrality: dependence on external suppliers means direct exposure to crises, sanctions, and power disputes. Second, replacing Russian gas with alternative sources—especially American LNG—does not eliminate dependence but reconfigures it, shifting Europe’s energy axis from the Eurasian space to the Atlantic. Third, this reorganization strengthens the transatlantic bond while reducing Europe’s margin of strategic autonomy.

For Germany, whose industrial competitiveness has historically been sustained by abundant and cheap energy, the challenge is even deeper. The new reality implies accepting potentially higher costs in exchange for energy security—a choice that, in practice, redefines foreign, industrial, and defense policy priorities.

Thus, more than a simple market adjustment, European energy policy has become an instrument of geopolitical positioning. Ensuring stable access to energy has come to mean preserving economic sovereignty, industrial resilience, and the ability to exert international influence in a system increasingly marked by competition among great powers.

France holds a noticeably different vision from Germany regarding its current energy geopolitics—a difference that is not merely technical, but strategic, as it involves autonomy, security, and the projection of power within Europe itself.

It is important to understand that the two countries have built almost opposite energy matrices over the past decades. France has constructed its energy security based on nuclear power, while Germany chose to abandon that technology, rely on natural gas from pipelines connected to Russia, and accelerate the transition toward renewables.

Energy has become one of the main vectors of power reorganization within the European Union, gradually shifting the traditional Franco-German axis and redefining who holds greater strategic influence within the bloc. This process is not limited to economics—it involves security, geopolitical autonomy, and international projection capacity.

Energy is redefining the European hierarchy because it has come to function as a geopolitical asset equivalent to military or financial power.

The European Union needs a new Energy Security Strategy capable of reflecting contemporary geopolitical realities and the rapid technological advances in the energy sector. Recent experience has shown that external dependence on fossil fuels and critical supply chains constitutes a strategic vulnerability, subject to political and economic exploitation by revisionist actors.

In this context, the expansion of domestic energy sources—particularly bioenergy—must be understood not only as a climate imperative, but as a central pillar of European energy sovereignty. However, fully harnessing this potential requires the consolidation of a truly integrated energy market, based on physical interconnections, regulatory harmonization, and supranational coordination of infrastructure planning and financing.

In parallel, European energy infrastructure must be treated as a strategic security asset, requiring enhanced protection against extreme climate risks, cyberattacks, and hybrid threats. As electrification advances, the criticality of grids, storage systems, and cross-border energy corridors also increases.

Finally, the objective of greater energy autonomy requires strengthening strategic partnerships for the supply of critical raw materials, essential for renewable technologies, batteries, and smart grids. Thus, a strategic offensive based on domestic energy sources must combine deeper cooperation in infrastructure planning and financing with an integrated security approach capable of anticipating and mitigating threats to Europe’s critical infrastructure.

• Luis Augusto Medeiros Rutledge is a Petroleum Engineer and Energy Geopolitics Analyst. He holds an Executive MBA in Oil and Gas Economics from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) and a postgraduate degree in International Relations and Diplomacy from IBMEC. He works as a researcher at UFRJ, is a Consulting Member of the Observatory of the Islamic World of Portugal, a Consultant for the Center for Foreign Trade Studies Foundation (FUNCEX), a columnist for the website Mente Mundo Relações Internacionais, and the author of numerous published articles on the energy sector.