Algeria is an unreliable gas supplier for the EU and the bloc’s current relationship with the country is “short-sighted”, according to a report by the European Council On Foreign Relations.

It cites growing links with Russia, increasing domestic energy consumption and declining gas production among a number of factors that should make policymakers think twice about increasing reliance on the North African nation.

Europe is currently seeking to reduce its energy dependence on Russia and is increasingly looking to Algeria to provide supplies, but this reorientation towards Algiers is a mistake, according to Mansouria Mokhefi, the report’s author and special adviser for the Middle East and North Africa at the French Institute of International Relations.

“Algeria will remain an unreliable partner for the EU unless it manages to implement the necessary domestic reforms that promote good governance, economic growth, democracy and transparency,” she says.

Algeria is currently the EU’s third-biggest supplier of natural gas, after Russia and Norway, and sends 80 per cent of all its exports to the region.