Energy Strategy Reviews 37 (2021) 100695 Available online 5 August 2021 2211-467X/© 2021 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The external energy actorness of the EU towards Egypt Luk´ aˇs Tichý a , Zbynˇek Dubský b, * , Jan Mazaˇc a, b a Institute of International Relations Prague, Nerudova 3, Prague 1, 118 50, Czech Republic b Prague University of Economics and Business, Prague, n´ am. Winstona Churchilla 1938/4, 130 67, Czech Republic A R T I C L E INFO Keywords: European Union External actorness Energy relations Egypt ABSTRACT The aim of this article is to apply the concept of external actorness to an analysis of EU energy relations towards Egypt in 1995–2020, with an emphasis on the related potential for strengthening energy security. The external actorness of the EU in its energy relations is based on a set of predefined criteria of a modified concept: (1) the consistency and specificity of the external energy policy and its goals and interests; (2) the diplomatic apparatus and policy tools; and (3) external recognition of the EU energy actorness by third parties. The article concludes that the EU in its energy relations with Egypt promotes its goals/interests, and has a diplomatic apparatus and political tools, but it is perceived and accepted only as a partial energy actor. 1. Introduction The economy of the European Union (EU) has relied upon energy imports ever since its foundation. In addition, it is expected that indig- enous natural gas production will drop by roughly 60%, and crude oil production by almost 40% over the next decade. As a consequence, the EU’s energy dependency rate will most likely (despite slightly decreasing demand) rise above the current 60% [1]. Therefore, stable and uninterrupted energy supplies have logically become one of the main pillars and priority objectives of the EU’s energy policy, as has been acknowledged by the European Commission (EC) in numerous measures. In line with the Energy Union (EnU) strategy, the EU, through its energy diplomacy, will continue to further develop its strategic en- ergy partnerships with important producing and transit countries. At the same time, the EU gives priority to partners and initiatives that are crucial to efforts to strengthen the diversification of energy sources, routes, and suppliers [2]. Therefore, in the EU’s external energy relations, the attention has been dominantly focused on the current significant and likely energy exporters to the EU, particularly in relation to their potential to reliably provide energy supplies. Egypt was selected for this study on the basis of its role in import diversification (diversity of energy sources, supplies and energy transportation routes) [see Refs. [3–8]]. Although Egypt might seem insignificant at present (especially when its extracted energy goes exclusively to its domestic market) [9], its energy potential is remarkable [10]. Due to this fact, the EU considers the energy link with Egypt to be important for the EU’s external energy policy as well as its energy security [5–8]. Besides, Egypt as a potential supplier of renew- ables might help the EU to reach its decarbonization goals [11]. The article focuses on the energy relations between the EU and Egypt in the period between the adoption of the Barcelona Declaration (BD) (1995) and 2020 and evaluates them through the prism of the modified concept of the EU external energy actorness. The EU’s energy actorness is presented as the connection of the concept of the EU external actor- ness with the EU energy policy, which allows one to define the following criteria: the consistency and specificity of the EU energy policy and its goals and interests; the diplomatic apparatus and tools of the EU energy policy and the external acceptance and perception of the EU by third parties [see Ref. [12]]. The article has the following structure. The first part accounts for the modified concept of the EU external actorness in energy relations and deals with the identification of its basic criteria and their operationali- zation to test the position of the EU as an independent energy actor in international (energy) relations. The subsequent part presents the reasoning for the case selection. The third section focuses on the used methodology, qualitative content analysis, and the data selection. In the final part, we present the outcomes of our empirical analysis. 2. The modified concept of the EU external energy actorness 2.1. The concept of the external actorness and EU energy policy On the theoretical level, the paper is based on the concept of EU external actorness, which means the EU’s ability to formulate and * Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: tichy@iir.cz (L. Tichý), dubskyz@vse.cz (Z. Dubský), mazac.jan@email.cz (J. Mazaˇc). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Energy Strategy Reviews journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/esr https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esr.2021.100695 Received 7 July 2020; Received in revised form 19 July 2021; Accepted 28 July 2021