Published on 06/05/2025
European Union’s executive will soon unveil legislation to end all Russian gas imports by the end of 2027.
The goal is at the core of a plan that the European Commission presented on Tuesday. The Commission said it will release legislation next month to ban new gas contracts with Russia — a prohibition that would kick in at the end of 2025 for short-term market purchases, and at the end of 2027 for long-term contracts.
The plan will similarly target Russian oil, but with less-binding measures. And it will go after Russian nuclear supplies, proposing upcoming measures and laws to shun Russian nuclear fuel and uranium imports.
“Today the European Union sends a very clear message to Russia — no more,” EU energy chief Dan Jørgensen said as he unveiled the plan. “No more will we allow our member states to be blackmailed, no more will we indirectly help fill up the war chest in the Kremlin.”
The move sets EU officials up for a clash with countries less keen to lose supplies of historically cheaper Russian imports, like Hungary and Slovakia. While the Commission can propose laws, it has to go through extensive negotiations with EU capitals and the European Parliament.
Still, the barrage of proposals signals Brussels’ commitment to quitting Moscow’s fuel, even as appetite for strong sanctions dwindles, Russian gas imports rise and U.S. President Donald Trump raises the spectre of revived business ties with Moscow.
“We can adopt it without unanimity,” Jørgensen said of the upcoming proposals when asked about Hungary. “I hope that everybody will move forward, obviously, but if they don’t, that is also okay.”
Finalizing the divorce
The new strategy is the latest step in a years-long EU campaign to end energy ties with Russia after its all-out invasion in 2022. But it lands as the bloc strains to sustain that momentum, with high energy prices denting economic growth and some politicians and firms calling for a return to Russian imports.
The EU has so far slashed its reliance on Moscow’s pipeline gas supplies by around two-thirds and banned seaborne imports of coal and oil. But the bloc continues to rely on Moscow for uranium supplies and buys significant volumes of supercooled liquefied natural gas (LNG) arriving via ship.
Last year, the EU still leaned on Russia for 19 percent of its gas imports, according to the text, while buying 13 million tons of pipeline oil supplies and 2,800 tons of nuclear fuel from Moscow.
And in 2025 alone, the EU has bought 6 million tons of Russian LNG worth more than €2.5 billion, according to data from the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air think tank.
As part of its plan, Brussels will propose reporting requirements on firms to detail the volume and duration of their Russian energy contracts and ask countries to offer plans this year to phase out Moscow-linked supplies. EU officials will also beef up an existing scheme that leverages the bloc’s joint gas purchasing power to bring down prices.
The Commission’s plan also vows to “continue its discussions with reliable suppliers,” most notably including the U.S., which wants the EU to buy more of its LNG. The two sides have yet to reach a deal, however.
Tuesday’s plan was delayed for weeks as talks dragged on with Donald Trump’s administration over a potential LNG agreement. EU officials were angling to get a pact done with the U.S. president before releasing the Russian energy plan, hoping to show they had already secured American alternatives.
But Jørgensen insisted the two issues weren’t linked: “This is not something that we do now because of anything that’s happening at the other side of the Atlantic. “
The document does, however, note that 170 billion cubic meters of new LNG capacity are set to come online globally by 2027, including a doubling of North American capacity.
The plan also stresses that the EU executive will increase efforts to electrify its economy and consider expanding a platform for companies to jointly purchase supplies like biomethane, to replace supplies of traditional natural gas.
Nuclear is nigh
The new plan also targets the bloc’s lingering nuclear ties to Moscow, which supplies a fifth of the EU’s raw uranium and 38 percent of its enrichment capacity. Five countries — Finland, Bulgaria, Slovakia, Hungary and the Czech Republic — still rely on Russian-built reactors.
To break that dependency, Brussels will present a new legal bill next month making enriched uranium from Russia “economically less viable” through trade measures, the plan states, and separately restrict new contracts signed between the EU’s uranium supply agency and Moscow.
It will also aim to clamp down on sanctions loopholes, including efforts to restrict Russia’s so-called shadow fleet — its mushrooming army of aging vessels with little-known insurance. The Commission said it wants to ink new deals with countries legally responsible for those tankers, allowing them to conduct “pre-authorized boarding operations” of the ships.
For now, the plan’s recommendations are non-binding, and its suggestions for future proposals will require the backing of a majority of EU countries before they are agreed.
And any ban on imports is likely to come up against stiff opposition, notably from Hungary and Slovakia’s Russia-friendly governments. Budapest and Bratislava have repeatedly torpedoed efforts to sanction Moscow’s atomic and gas sectors, while continuing to rely on Russia for over 80 percent of their oil and buying gas through the Russia-to-Turkey subsea TurkStream pipeline.
EU countries are set to discuss the proposal for the first time on Thursday.
