Abstract
Laidi has qualified the EU as being a normative empire considering that the EU normative production goes beyond its borders. The concept of a normative empire questioned the impact of an EU normative power – considered to be “a power which is able to shape the conceptions through ideas” - on its role as a global power. The strength of EU normative power is related to its internal market and to the globalization.
The European Commission has defined the ways by which the EU is impacting third countries: “The EU promotes its values and interests by operating simultaneously as a continental power and as a global economic and political player, using various instruments ranging from the Common Foreign and Security Policy, assistance and trade on the one hand to the external dimensions of the EU's internal policies on the other”.
Indeed, by setting its norms as often the highest in the world, the EU forces third countries enters EU market to adapt to these norms. Consequently one can assess those EU internal policies such as the common energy policy (CEP) impact third countries causing an Europeanization of their energy policy. Therefore EU's normative power is seen as an asset for the role of the EU as a global power, through an analysis of the impact of EU energy policy on the members of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and one can assess the relevance of this hypothesis.
