The European Union has committed to phase out all remaining imports of Russian oil by the end of 2027 and will “never again” go back to depending on energy from the Kremlin, officials announced on Dec. 3.
A statement from the European Commission said it will present a legislative proposal to ban its Russian oil imports early next year, as part of broad measures intended to cut remaining energy links with its former supplier.
“This is the dawn of a new era, the era of Europe’s full energy independence from Russia,” said EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
By March 2026, member states will be required to submit plans to diversify their oil and gas supplies, triggering an assessment by the Commission and country-level recommendations.
The Commission is ready to support member states through the phaseout process, and will monitor the impacts of switching suppliers along with compliance, it said.
Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Europe has drastically reduced its dependence on the world’s third-largest oil producer. Over December 2022 to February 2023, it banned seaborne imports of Russian crude and refined products in close succession, leaving only pipeline supplies flowing to a handful of Central European countries.
According to EC figures, imports of Russian oil have shrunk from 27% of the EU’s total imports at the beginning of 2022 to just 2% today. Hungary and Slovakia are the last European countries to still depend on Russian oil, and have so far resisted pressure to switch to alternative supply sources.
In contrast, other former pipeline buyers such as Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic have already ended their Russian oil imports amid mounting pressure to cut historic trade links and repeated attacks on Europe’s Druzhba pipeline system.
Speaking at a joint press conference announcing the decision, EU energy commissioner Dan Jorgensen called the Russian oil phaseout a critical measure to preserve energy security within the bloc. “We have to do this as soon as possible and no later than by the end of 2027,” he told reporters.
Permanent shift
“We will never go back to our dangerous dependence on Russia, to volatile supplies and market manipulation, to energy blackmail and economic exposure,” Jorgensen added, expressing limited appetite for any future trade reconciliation. Instead, Europe should rely on “clean and homegrown energy,” he said.
The bloc has made energy sanctions a cornerstone of its resistance against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but has been under pressure from the US to cut remaining trade ties in recent months.
“We were paying to Russia Eur12 billion a month at the beginning of the war for fossil fuels. Now we are down to Eur1.5 billion per month — still too much. We aim to bring it down to zero,” von der Leyen said.
The US also vowed to clamp down on Russia’s oil trade by sanctioning its two largest producers, Lukoil and Rosneft, in November, but has since issued exemptions that have kept supplies flowing to Hungary and Slovakia.
Also speaking at the press briefing, Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency, said that Europe’s reliance on Russian energy was a dangerous byproduct of a previous diversification from Middle Eastern oil which went “too far” and created a growing dependency on Russian gas by the early 2000s.
The announcement of the stricter measures follows an apparent speedbump in ongoing peace negotiations, as Russian President Vladimir Putin and US negotiators appear to have failed to reach an agreement after talks in Moscow. In European morning trading hours, ICE Brent crude futures broke $63/b, up from a previous close of $62.45/b the previous day.
Source: Platts
