The EU will end its dependency on Russian energy by stopping the import of Russian gas and oil and phasing out Russian nuclear energy, while ensuring stable energy supplies and prices across the Union.
“The REPowerEU Roadmap, presented on May 6 by the European Commission, paves the way to ensure the EU’s full energy independence from Russia,” the European Commission said in its release.
Despite the significant progress achieved under the REPowerEU Plan and via sanctions since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, in 2024 the EU saw a rebound in Russian gas imports.
Ursula von der Leyen, European Commission President, said: “The war in Ukraine has brutally exposed the risks of blackmail, economic coercion and price shocks. With REPowerEU, we have diversified our energy supply and drastically reduced Europe’s former dependency on Russian fossil fuels. It is now time for Europe to completely cut off its energy ties with an unreliable supplier. And energy that comes to our continent should not pay for a war of aggression against Ukraine. We owe this to our citizens, to our companies and to our brave Ukrainian friends.”
The roadmap sets out a gradual removal of Russian oil, gas and nuclear energy from the EU markets.
As of 2025, the global LNG supplies are foreseen to grow rapidly, while gas demand will decrease.
With the full implementation of the energy transition framework and the Action Plan for Affordable Energy, the EU is expected to replace up to 100 billion cubic meters of natural gas by 2030, which means a decrease in demand by 40-50 bcm by 2027.
At the same time, LNG capacities are expected to increase by around 200 bcm by 2028, which is five times more than current EU imports of Russian gas.
The roadmap will be followed by legislative proposals by the European Commission next month.
The European Commission will ask the Member States to prepare national plans by the end of this year setting out how they will contribute to phasing out imports of Russian gas, nuclear energy and oil.
As regard gas, the Commission expects the upcoming proposals to improve the “transparency, monitoring and traceability of Russian gas across the EU markets.”
“Crucially, new contracts with suppliers of Russian gas (pipeline and LNG) will be prevented, and existing spot contracts will be stopped by the end of 2025,” the Commission said.
This measure will ensure that already by the end of this year, the EU will have slashed by one third remaining supplies of Russian gas.
The Commission also said that will further propose to stop all remaining imports of Russian gas by the end of 2027.
Under the Roadmap, the Commission will also put forward new actions to address Russia’s shadow fleet transporting oil.
