A study of 26 bilateral agreements signed between 2020 and 2024 finds that the market architecture is expanding quickly but remains narrow, politically strategic and far from mature. For the energy transition, the central question is no longer only how much hydrogen Europe can produce, but who will control its supply chains, infrastructure and industrial value.
A concentrated partnership map
The timing of the agreements is significant. Eleven were signed in 2022 and another nine in 2023. Together, those two years account for 20 of the 26 agreements examined, coinciding with the launch of the European Union’s REPowerEU strategy and the COP27 summit in Egypt.
REPowerEU sets a target of 10 million tonnes of renewable hydrogen production inside the EU and another 10 million tonnes of imports by 2030. That policy links hydrogen to two objectives: industrial decarbonization and energy security following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The result is a shift from hydrogen as primarily a climate-technology issue toward hydrogen as a strategic commodity.
Germany and the European Union, treated as separate actors in the study’s dataset, each appear in nine agreements. Together, they are involved in 69.2% of the sample. France and the Netherlands account for two agreements each, while several EU member states have none.
On the producer side, Morocco has the strongest network position, with six agreements involving six European counterparts. Algeria and Namibia follow with three each. Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Tunisia have two apiece. The study identifies Morocco as a structural broker between EU institutions and individual European governments.
The network is still exceptionally thin. Of 972 theoretically possible EU–MENA and EU–Sub-Saharan Africa country pairings, only 26—about 2.7%—had produced signed agreements. That is not a functioning commodity market. It is an early-stage diplomatic and industrial framework.
The infrastructure problem is larger than the announcement cycle
The agreements may attract investment and help producer countries gain influence over emerging standards. They do not, by themselves, establish commercially scalable hydrogen supply.
Green hydrogen requires renewable electricity, electrolyzers, water, storage, transport and a dependable industrial buyer. The evidence reviewed here maps the partnerships but does not establish why individual agreements were formed or whether they will reach final investment decisions. The study’s causal analysis is reserved for a later phase.
That distinction matters. A memorandum or bilateral agreement can identify political intent without resolving capex, intermittency, offtake risk or export logistics. Europe’s import target also creates a demanding systems problem: imported hydrogen must move across borders in a form that remains technically viable and economically competitive. The available material does not provide project-level costs, delivery schedules or confirmed volumes. Those gaps prevent a reliable assessment of how much of the stated ambition can become physical supply.
The geography nevertheless points to a clear strategic pattern. MENA and African states are being positioned not merely as renewable-energy markets or development partners, but as prospective suppliers to hard-to-abate sectors such as steel, chemicals, aviation and shipping. That creates the possibility of industrial gains in producer countries. It also raises the risk that Europe secures low-carbon inputs while higher-value processing, technology and standards remain elsewhere.
What to watch next
The practical test is conversion. Readers tracking the sector should distinguish signed agreements from projects with disclosed capacity, financing, infrastructure and buyers. The current evidence confirms a dense diplomatic push, not equivalent commercial delivery.
Morocco’s position is particularly important because its six bilateral agreements give it the broadest network among the producers identified in the study. Algeria and Namibia also warrant attention, but the wider system remains dependent on a small number of corridors and counterparties. Concentration can accelerate coordination. It can also create bottlenecks and bargaining asymmetries.
Europe’s hydrogen policy is therefore entering a more demanding phase. The first phase was target-setting and partnership formation. The next will be judged by electrolyzer deployment, renewable-power availability, transport infrastructure and industrial offtake. Until those elements are visible at project level, the race for green hydrogen remains more advanced diplomatically than commercially.