Financer la transition énergétique en Europe centrale et orientale : un levier pour surmonter la dépendance de sentier à l’égard de la Russie ?

Since their accession to the European Union, the Central and Eastern European countries (CEECs) have been called upon to implement low-carbon strategies to achieve the EU?s sustainable development objectives. This article shows that the contribution of the energy sector to these ambitions remains modest for the moment. In the CEECs, there is a significant path dependency effect, which indicates that their energy systems are significantly dependent on Russia. It appears that external (mainly European) financing plays a certain role in the energy transition in Central and Eastern Europe. However, as the Polish and Bulgarian cases show, the bifurcation of energy trajectory in the long term requires, in addition to international financing, a certain institutional stability and a broader public consensus on the place of renewable energies in the economy, elements which are not necessarily met in all the CEEC. Classification JEL : Q40, Q41, Q48.