By Jerome Fagelson– January 2026
Jérôme Fagelson is an expert and consultant in energy and geopolitics, having held several positions in energy trading in various European markets, particularly in Central and Eastern Europe.
Since February 2022, Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) has been more than just the scene of a kinetic confrontation on the European Union markets; it has become the laboratory for an unprecedented infrastructure revolution. Long perceived as the “captive periphery” of energy networks inherited from the Soviet era, the region has undergone a strategic transformation that is now redefining the balance of power across the entire continent. From the Baltic to the Adriatic, the paradigm of dependence has given way to a desire for projected sovereignty, where energy is no longer just a commodity, but the main driver of a profound geopolitical realignment. This note analyzes the mechanisms of this major decoupling, between the break with Moscow, the renaissance of nuclear power, and the emergence of new regional pivots.
The erosion of Russian hegemony: from blackmail to erasure
The end of Russian control over the energy sector is the result of a dual dynamic: the acceleration of a transition already begun by the Baltic states and the vital need for regional powers to detoxify their critical infrastructure from Moscow’s assets.
The decline of Russian pipeline gas and the rise of liquefied natural gas (LNG)
The shift in European gas geography is undoubtedly the most obvious break with the past in recent decades. While the invasion of Ukraine in 2022 sounded the death knell for East-West flows, it was Lithuania’s pioneering model, launched in 2014 with the Klaipėda terminal, that served as a compass for the CEE countries. By reversing the logic of LNG flows, Poland, Croatia, Greece, Turkey, and even Germany have transformed their coastlines into gas vacuum cleaners. We have moved from a regional market to a global market.
This change confirms the failure of Russia’s bypass pipeline strategy: the Nord Stream 1 and 2 projects, designed to lock in the German-Russian axis under the Baltic Sea, are now nothing more than ghost infrastructure, while the historic transit via Ukraine expired on December 31, 2024. The only survivor of this continental architecture, the TurkStream gas pipeline now plays an ambiguous role, serving as the last umbilical cord for a handful of landlocked countries such as Hungary and Serbia, while turning Turkey into an opportunistic redistribution hub mixing Russian molecules and arrivals from around the world via LNG.
Europe has thus seen a constellation of permanent and floating LNG terminals spring up in record time, enabling it to impose a new plurality of suppliers ranging from Norway to Qatar, via the United States. The danger now would be to fall into the other extreme, becoming dependent on American LNG. From monopoly to perfect competition. In December 2025, the European Parliament’s vote to phase out Russian gas by fall 2027 merely set in stone a physical reality that was already well established: LNG has broken Gazprom’s pipelines. This transformation is particularly visible in Poland where the activation of the Baltic Pipe and the extension of Świnoujście or in the Czech Republic with ČEZ, which has reserved a portion of the slots in the floating methane terminal of Eemshaven (the first terminal to open in Europe after the start of the war in Ukraine) have allowed a total decoupling, while further south, the Croatian terminal of Krk and the Greek hub of Alexandroupolis now have a free supply backbone imperatives of the Kremlin. The Council of the European Union has finally legally endorsed this approach, this pivot already partly observed on the ground on January 26, 2026 by officially adopting the regulation setting the definitive end of imports of Russian fossil fuels (natural gas and LNG) by 2027. This will be a full-scale test for this new strategic approach.
Serbian oil: transactional pragmatism under the Hungarian umbrella
However, the decline in Russian influence is not uniform and sometimes takes more subtle forms, as in the oil sector in the Balkans. Serbia, linked to Moscow through the company NIS (Naftna industrija Srbije), has had to maneuver with remarkable agility to avoid the paralysis of its refining system under the weight of Western sanctions. The recent purchase by Hungarian giant MOL (which has yet to be approved by the US and European authorities at the time of writing) of a majority stake in NIS from Gazprom marks a major turning point. The €400 million acquisition in 2008, a mere pittance, came with a political component, including a veto on the Kosovo ¹ issue in the UN Security Council and a soft power policy such as sponsorship of the Red Star Belgrade football club. This move, which could be described as “transactional,” allows Belgrade to shield its strategic assets from American pressure while strengthening the political axis between Aleksandar Vučić and Viktor Orbán. For Budapest, this expansion is an opportunity to weave its energy web in the Western Balkans, integrating Serbia into its own sphere of influence, even building a new oil pipeline to the Serbian border for €320 million.
For Moscow, the sale to MOL represents an orderly retreat: by selling its shares to a European player known for its pragmatic approach to Russian oil, Gazprom is ensuring that NIS will remain a market for Ural oil in the long term, while outsourcing the geopolitical risk to a circumstantial ally. It is a choice of continuity.
Decarbonization as a vector of national security
Far from being a simple response to the climate commitments made in Paris or Brussels, the energy transition in the CEE countries has become a national security imperative, with nuclear power and renewable energies acting as a shield against the volatility of external markets.
The atom: the rebirth of a strategic shield
In a context where independence is the watchword, nuclear power has established itself as the only alternative capable of ensuring long-term sovereignty. For nations such as Poland, the Czech Republic, and Romania, the choice of technological partner has become a natural extension of military alliances within NATO. In January 2026, the Lubiatowo-Kopalino project in Poland symbolizes this new era: by entrusting its engineering to the American consortium Westinghouse-Bechtel while integrating European technologies for turbines such as the French solution from Arabelle Solutions (a subsidiary of EDF), Warsaw is designing a hybrid strategic autonomy. The same players are involved in Slovakia, while the Czechs have entrusted the construction of their new nuclear units in Dukovany to Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power (KHNP). The Paks 2 project in Hungary offers cooperation between countries, with Serbia looking to take a stake in the plant in exchange for withdrawal rights. At the same time, a pan-European effort has been made to break dependence on Rosatom for the supply of nuclear fuel, thanks in part to France’s Framatome. Still within the realm of cooperative projects, we can mention Cernavoda 3&4 and its engineering, procurement, and construction contract signed under the auspices of Canada, with Italian, French, and Korean participation to be confirmed. The emergence of Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) completes this picture, with Romania leading the way and the Czech Republic, where ČEZ’s 20% stake in Rolls-Royce projects illustrates a desire to occupy all segments of the nuclear value chain, potentially raising questions about the future of new power plant projects. In Slovakia, the Phoenix project aims to convert coal-fired power plants into SMRs adding a local anchor.
The rise of renewables: decentralized autonomy
In addition to nuclear base load power, the region is experiencing an unprecedented boom in renewable energy. In 2025, Hungary crossed the critical threshold of 8.5 GW of installed capacity. This massive deployment has created an unprecedented situation: on clear days, solar production now far exceeds average demand (around 7 GW in Hungary), feeding a surplus of energy into the local grids. Solar panels are being installed on a massive scale in the region. Romania, which has nearly three times fewer inhabitants than France, installed only half as many solar panels as France in 2025. However, this abundance exposes a structural weakness: the narrowness of the electrical “tube.” The real challenge in 2026 no longer lies in production, but in managing the gap between midday supply and peak demand. To avoid massive curtailment of this free energy, the region has embarked on a race to store it. Greece and Hungary now require coupled storage to stabilize their grids. This surge in renewable energy is undermining the profitability of coal-fired power plants. In the Czech Republic, the energy group Sev.en plans to close three power plants (Chvaletice, Počerady, and Kladno) by March 2027 due to their low profitability, while the national goal is to phase out coal completely by 2033.
The challenge now is to transform this intermittent production into a resilient flow capable of circulating via modernized cross-border interconnections. This transformation is vital for industrial competitiveness: by capturing surplus solar energy and releasing it during evening consumption peaks, these countries are breaking the last lever of pressure on energy prices.
Towards a new architecture: the fortified eastern flank
The physical reorganization of flows and production capacities has led to the emergence of a new European geopolitical architecture, in which the eastern flank is no longer a terminus but a central pivot.
The advent of the vertical corridor and the Three Seas hub ²
The most significant structural change of the decade has been the collapse of the horizontal (East-West) transit model, a legacy of Soviet dependence that has become anachronistic, in favor of a vertical flow architecture. This shift represents not only a change in the direction of molecules, but a total overhaul of continental security: Southeast Europe, long relegated to the status of an energy “dead end,” has been transformed into a strategic artery capable of supplying the continent from south to north. The Trans-Balkan route, formerly dedicated to the transit of Russian gas to Turkey, has seen its flows reversed to transport American LNG or Azerbaijani gas to the north. The Alexandroupolis hub in Greece has become the nerve center of this new traffic, facilitated by unprecedented technical cooperation between regional network operators. This integration not only secures the Balkans’ supply, but also offers Ukraine an opportunity for storage and transit that is essential to its own resilience.
Innovation is not only physical, it is contractual. Transmission system operators (TSOs) have introduced bundled capacity products, such as “Route 1,” which allows traders to book firm transit from Greece to Ukraine at a single, competitive rate. These bundles eliminate the complex stacking of national tariffs and turn the Trans-Balkan route—once the instrument of Gazprom’s dominance—into a vector of liquidity. This fluidity allows Ukraine to transform its massive reservoirs (over 30 Gm3) into a regional energy vault, storing surplus summer LNG for release during winter consumption peaks. 2026 is the year of border transformation with new infrastructure such as the Rehden 2 compressor station, which will enable reverse flow to the east (VIP Brandov). Further south, the reinforcement of the Bulgarian and Romanian backbone will enable LNG landed at Alexandroupolis to be transported to Ukraine, with capacity at the Isaccea-Orlovka interconnection point jumping from 85 GWh/day to over 206 GWh/day (approximately 7.5 Gm3/year). In the north, the Baltic terminals play a symmetrical role, transforming Poland and Lithuania into guarantors of energy security for the European hinterland.
Further to the west, Italy has become a parallel corridor since the installation of two new floating gas terminals in Piombino and Revenne, but also with new capacities for the gas pipeline TAP acheminant du gaz azéri jusqu’à Melendugno dans les Pouilles. This surplus of gas, 1.2 billion m3, equivalent to the annual consumption of Slovenia, has allowed Socar (Azerbaijani state gas company) to sign long-term supply contracts to provide gas to Germany and Austria from this month of January 2026. We are creating a doubled energy infrastructure, diversifying supply and reducing possible pressures on supply to landlocked.
This “vertical” network no longer simply transports gas; it safeguards European autonomy, allowing each molecule to circulate freely from sea to land according to market opportunities rather than geopolitical dictates.
Romania: the new energy hub of the Black Sea
At the heart of this initiative, Romania is emerging as the region’s future key player. The Neptun Deep project in the Black Sea, which has been a national priority since 2023, is expected to make Bucharest the European Union’s leading gas producer by 2027. This field is much more than an economic resource; it is the foundation on which Moldova’s security and the rebalancing of power in the Balkans rest. By becoming a net exporter, Romania is consolidating its eastern flank and offering the EU a credible and stable alternative in the face of persistent uncertainties on global markets, while providing an energy source that can produce base load electricity but also adapt to renewable production.
This strengthening of Romania’s energy situation completes the transformation of the region into a coherent bloc, capable of influencing EU decisions and resisting attempts at external destabilization.
The energy transition in Central and Eastern Europe since 2022 is a historic shift whose full significance we are only beginning to grasp. By breaking Russia’s stranglehold, investing in next-generation nuclear power, and reversing the logic of its energy flows, the region has ceased to be a vulnerable buffer zone and has become the new bastion of European energy sovereignty. The emergence of the Three Seas Initiative as a coherent infrastructure bloc is redrawing the balance of power within the EU. While many challenges remain, particularly in terms of energy storage and costs, the eastern flank now has the levers it needs to secure its future, proving that energy geopolitics is, more than ever, the foundation of power in the 21st century.
¹ Serbia refuses to recognize Kosovo’s independence on the grounds of its constitutional territorial integrity and the historical and religious significance of this region, considered to be the cradle of the Serbian nation.
² The Three Seas Initiative is a cooperation platform bringing together thirteen European Union member states located between the Baltic, Adriatic, and Black Seas, with the aim of strengthening their integration and security through the development of common infrastructure in the energy, transport, and digital sectors.
Président fondateur d’Euro Créative, spécialiste Europe centrale
