Forty years of dependencies do not evaporate in the blink of an eye, and that of Russian fossils, for the EU, has been the most difficult challenge since the beginning of Ukraine’s invasion. With the nineteenth package of sanctions, also on the push of Donald Trump, the Commission wanted to give a further acceleration to the ranks of oil and Russian gas imports. A dossier that, according to Palazzo Berlaymont, still involves 8 member countries. Not only Hungary and Slovakia, therefore, but also Greece, France, Belgium, Holland, Portugal and Spain. It is to the last five, which import exclusively GNL, that the package of sanctions put on the table by Ursula von der Leyen is addressed.
The choice to hit the GNL with the total prohibition of import from January 1, 2027 was not accidental. Liquefied natural gas, which arrives in European cities by sea, is easier to stop, even from a point of view of the interruption of the existing contracts. It does not involve, also Hungary and Slovakia. Call Viktor Orban and Robert Fico, the two closest European leaders to Moscow, to accept the new energy measures of the Commission was not considered practicable.
And without unanimously the entire package of sanctions would have ended up in a cul de sac. Thus, for Budapest and Bratislava, the plan foreseen by the repower remained standing, which determines in January 2028 the closure of the taps of the ducts where Russian gas flows. On the Jnl, on the other hand, with the green light of 27 to the penalties – scheduled in October – it will be intervened immediately. First short -term contracts will be interrupted, then the long -term ones. According to the commission, the losses for the Cremlin coffers will not be marginal. At the constant decrease of Russian gas import via Gasdotto in recent months has contracted the increase in the importion of the GNL.
In the first semester of 2025, for example, imports through Gasdotti – also thanks to the closure of the transit in Ukraine – went down by 9% but, if we cross the data with the purchases of GNL, the total import importance recorded a +3.4%. It must be said that the purchases of liquefied natural gas have also undergone a recent drop. According to the Eurostat, the import share from Russia dropped to 14% in the second quarter of 2025 from 22% of the first quarter of 2021. With the last tranche of sanctions Brussels wants to give the coup de grace, also thanks to a certain ease of diversification.
The calculations of the EU executive predict that the Russian Gnl can be easily replaced by that coming from Norway, USA, North Africa, Gulf countries or Indonesia. The spare part, moreover, is already in place. If you look at Italy, for example, in the first half of 2025 the United States became the main supplier of GNL, representing 45%of the total imports, followed by Qatar (24%) and Algeria (20%). Of course, the dream of thezzeration is still far away. The Turkstream pipeline continues to feed Hungary, Slovakia and will still do it for a while. The total detachment from Russian oil is closer. In 2021 the EU imported 25%, today 3%, entirely focused on Slovakia and Hungary. On this decisive point it could be the pressing of Trump, who for days has been asking the EU not to buy more Russian energy.