EU delays proposal to permanently ban Russian oil imports
The proposal is not cancelled, but would no longer be published by April 15 due to ‘current geopolitical developments’
The European Commission will no longer submit a legal proposal to permanently ban Russian oil imports over Moscow’s war in Ukraine on April 15 as previously planned, an updated EU legislative agenda showed on Tuesday.
An EU official, however, said the proposal had not been cancelled and would still be published though no longer by the mid-April date due to “current geopolitical developments”.
The US-Israeli war on Iran is creating the biggest oil supply disruption in history, according to the International Energy Agency, sending global crude prices soaring.
The proposal would fix into law a full phase-out of Russian oil imports by no later than end-2027. The European Union has already legislated a phase-out by late 2027 of gas imports from Russia.
The measure would have little immediate impact on physical supplies, since the EU was importing just 1 per cent of its oil from Russia by the final quarter of 2025, having slashed imports since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
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But Brussels wants to enshrine a full phase-out of Russian oil in legislation that would remain in place, even if a peace deal in the Ukraine war eventually leads to the EU lifting sanctions.