The European Commission will now not 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, nonetheless, told Reuters the proposal had not been canceled and would still be published though now not by the mid-April date resulting from “current geopolitical developments.”
The U.S.-Israeli war on Iran is creating the largest oil supply disruption in history, in line with 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, for the reason that EU was importing just 1% of its oil from Russia by the ultimate quarter of 2025, having slashed imports since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
But Brussels desires to enshrine a full phase-out of Russian oil in laws that might remain in place, even when a peace deal within the Ukraine war eventually results in the EU lifting sanctions.
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EU sanctions on seaborne Russian oil have already eliminated a lot of the bloc’s imports.
Hungary and Slovakia were the one two EU countries still importing Russian oil by January 27, when Kyiv said a Russian drone strike hit pipeline equipment in Ukraine, disrupting Russian oil shipments. Budapest and Bratislava have accused Ukraine of deliberately delaying the resumption of oil flows, triggering a political dispute that has seen Hungary block an EU loan to Kyiv.
The initial April 15 date would have seen the EU proposal land three days after Hungary’s parliamentary election. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who has maintained cordial ties with Moscow despite the Ukraine war, is strongly against any ban.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said this month that returning to Russian energy can be “a strategic blunder” and make Europe more vulnerable.