BRUSSELS, April 24. /TASS/. The President of the European Commission (EC) Ursula von der Leyen claimed that the EC would no longer postpone the publication of its plan on how to fully ban EU countries from using Russian gas.
"The European Commission will in the next two weeks present a roadmap on how it intends to phase out all imports of Russian fossil fuels," she said speaking at an energy forum in London.
In practice, this only concerns gas, since the European Union has imposed an embargo on the purchase of Russian oil since December 2022, and petroleum products since March 2023.
EU countries have deprived themselves of the opportunity to purchase Russian pipeline gas by abandoning the requirement to pay for it in rubles, since this deprived them of the opportunity to block Russia's income from the sale of gas to Europe under sanctions.
In 2024, according to the EC data, a sharp increase in purchases of liquefied natural gas from Russia by EU countries was recorded. In the 16th package of sanctions, the EC introduced restrictions on the transit of Russian LNG through European ports to third countries, but was unable to agree on a ban on its purchases by EU countries. The EC promised to present a plan for a complete ban on Russian gas back in early March, since then this step has been postponed twice.