A Procedural Justice Analysis of Cross-border Green Hydrogen Initiatives Between the EU and Tunisia

The EU’s hydrogen strategy, which aims to develop a European hydrogen market to decarbonise energy-intensive industries that are hard to electrify, relies partly on imports of green hydrogen from third countries such as Tunisia. Tunisia alone could potentially supply up to 40% of the green hydrogen target established in the REPowerEU Plan. The SoutH2 Corridor – a cross-border infrastructure project included in the Union’s list of Projects of Common Interest and Projects of Mutual Interest (PCIs and PMIs) – seeks to connect Tunisia with the European Union (EU) through a pipeline extending from Italy to Austria and Germany, with the goal of supplying the latter two with green hydrogen by 2030. This chapter examines the risks that such projects may pose for ensuring an inclusive and equitable energy transition in Tunisia. Given Europe’s historical relationship with Tunisia, including through colonisation, there are concerns that these energy projects will potentially perpetuate historical patterns of dominance, dependency, and extractivism. By analysing the challenges facing the EU, EU Member States and the Tunisian energy sectors in pursuing a just energy transition, alongside Tunisia’s democratic backsliding, the chapter highlights the absence of adequate procedural justice safeguards in some of the public and private legal arrangements underpinning the SoutH2 Corridor project. As such, it appears that said gaps strongly risk undermining the just energy transition, especially in Tunisia. The chapter concludes that the EU bears a responsibility to ensure that a set of minimum safeguards are established to prevent the reproduction of colonial practices in its external energy relations, using Tunisia as an illustrative example of broader risks faced by other partner countries in similar contexts.