
The European Union intends to 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 today by the European Commission, paves the way to ensuring the EU’s full energy independence from Russia.
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. More co-ordinated actions are therefore needed, as the EU’s over-dependency on Russian energy imports is a security threat.
Commission president Ursula von der Leyen 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 which is expected to take place in a co-ordinated and secure manner as the EU advances its energy transition. The measures ‘have been designed to preserve the security of the EU’s energy supply while limiting any impact on prices and markets.’
As of 2025, 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 cu m 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.
Today’s roadmap will be followed by legislative proposals by the Commission next month.
A ‘coordinated and stepwise’ phase-out
The Commission will work with the Member states to ensure that the EU-wide phase-out of Russian energy imports will be gradual and well-coordinated across the Union. They will be asked to prepare national plans by the end of this year setting out how they will contribute to phasing out, nuclear energy and oil from Russia.
All the measures will be accompanied by continuous efforts to accelerate the EU’s energy transition and diversify energy supplies, including via the aggregation of gas demand and a better use of infrastructure, to discard risks to the security of supply and market stability.
As regards gas, the upcoming proposals will 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 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. As regards nuclear, the proposals coming next month will include measures on Russian imports of enriched uranium, as well as restrictions on new supply contracts co-signed by the Euratom Supply Agency (ESA) for uranium, enriched uranium and other nuclear materials deriving from Russia. A European Radioisotopes Valley Initiative is also envisaged to secure EU supply of medical radioisotopes through increased own production.