Assessing the energy security of European Union countries from two perspectives – A new integrated approach based on MCDM methods

The subject of this article concerns a crucial issue of energy security in the European Union countries, especially during the war in Ukraine. The paper presents the results of a study aimed at assessing the level of energy security of EU-27 countries from two perspectives (for two variants of analysis). The first variant assesses the level of energy security of EU-27 countries, which is derived from a traditional approach related to the availability of energy sources at affordable prices (energy and economic factors). The second variant assesses the level of energy security from the perspective of sustainable development, the so-called sustainable energy security, which, in addition to energy and economic factors, also takes into account environmental and social factors. The multi-criteria nature of the subject matter undertaken determined the adoption of methodology based on Multiple-criteria decision-making methods (MCDM) for the study. Also, the author's integrated approach based on indicator weighting methods and MCDM methods was used. The CRiteria Importance Through Intercriteria Correlation (CRITIC) and standard deviation (SD) methods were utilized to determine indicator weights, and the Grey relational analysis (GRA) and the Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) methods were used for the core part of the research. Based on the proposed research methodology and the results, rankings of the studied countries were created for the two analyzed variants and the levels of energy security were specified. The research was carried out for an 11-year period between 2010 and 2020. The results showed that the level of energy security for some EU countries depends on the assessment variant. Regardless of the assessment variant, the high level of energy security was found in the Scandinavian countries. It is reasonable to use the presented results when developing a new EU energy and climate strategy, which seems absolutely necessary in the new geopolitical situation that has now emerged in the region. The article should also be regarded as a voice in the discussion on the choice of direction and pace of economic transformation in the context of building a sustainable knowledge-based economy and climate neutrality in Europe.