BRUSSELS — Nearly three years since Russian missiles began raining down across Ukraine, Europe is still buying vast quantities of Moscow’s oil and gas, helping fill the Kremlin’s war chest. Now, Poland wants to put the squeeze on those revenues.
Warsaw — one of Kyiv’s closest allies — hopes to use its turn at steering the European Union’s policy agenda to shine a light on how much fuel the bloc is still importing and drive a new crusade against imports of liquefied natural gas (LNG) and nuclear technology.
The center-right Civic Coalition government, led by Prime Minister Donald Tusk, will take over the six-month rotating presidency of the Council of the EU on Jan. 1. And, with other major economies like France and Germany facing political chaos back home, the Ukrainians and their closest allies in the bloc are looking to Warsaw to take charge.
“We have high hopes for the Polish Presidency of the Council,” said Vladyslav Vlasiuk, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and sanctions coordinator. “From classrooms to boardrooms, Poles and Ukrainians work every day to shape their shared future, thus our expectations are high for continued collaboration in this crucial area.”
According to the Helsinki-based Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, the EU has collectively spent more than €200 billion on Russian oil and gas since the start of the full-scale invasion. And, despite bloc-wide restrictions like an embargo on seaborne crude imports, there are still major loopholes and purchases of some fuels are rising. On top of that, there are warnings that Russia is openly violating a Western-imposed price cap limiting the amount it can charge for its oil.
Tusk has previously called for the “broadest possible sanctions” against Moscow, and has signaled in the lead-up to Poland’s presidency of the Council that he wants to raise barriers to the EU’s imports of Russian LNG, as well as target nuclear technology and the fuel supply chain that continues to raise revenue for the Kremlin.
The Polish prime minister has long pushed for tougher restrictions. In February 2022, days after Russia began its all-out assault on Kyiv, the former European Council president blasted EU countries that dragged their feet on sanctions as having “disgraced themselves” — naming and shaming Hungary, Germany and Italy. Previous energy sanctions packages have failed to find agreement for more ambitious measures, which need unanimity from member countries to come into force.
But the door to stronger enforcement could now be opening.
The Polish presidency coincides with a new European Commission, and officials want to show they can do more. Dan Jørgensen, the former Danish climate minister who now steers the bloc’s energy policy, has vowed to introduce a “roadmap” in the first quarter of 2025 to phase out dependency on Russia. That, according to documents produced ahead of his confirmation hearing and seen by POLITICO, could include both LNG and nuclear fuel.
New EU restrictions on the reexport of Russian LNG, passed in a previous sanctions package, will also enter into force in the first few months of next year. That means EU countries will be obliged to block the resale of natural gas flowing through their ports, creating a logistical headache for Moscow’s fleet of tankers. Belgium and France are two of the main hubs for this trade, and have already declared their intentions to implement the new rules.
Speaking to POLITICO, Belgian Energy Minister Tinne Van der Straeten said that the bloc needs a renewed focus on “transparency” — understanding the true origin of fuels, and the country has tabled a paper for consideration during the Polish presidency to do just that. “We [need] to be able to track the molecules, because in the end there is also the common goal to wean off Russian fuels,” she said. “If you want the roadmap to phase out Russian fuels entirely, you have to know where they are going.”
However, according to Maria Shagina, a Russia sanctions expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, while the Polish presidency offers a “good opportunity” to tighten the existing restrictions, “beyond LNG, there are few big-ticket sanctions left.”
“The main problem with the current Russian sanctions regime is that it lacks an endgame,” she said. “Sanctions are imposed in a reactive and incremental manner when Russia crosses another red line.”
Any wholesale overhaul of the EU’s trade ties with Moscow will come up against a major hurdle in the shape of Hungary. Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has vowed to oppose any new squeeze on Russian energy, particularly sanctions on the civilian nuclear sector. Budapest has struck a deal with Russia’s state atomic energy firm Rosatom to expand its Paks nuclear power station, locking itself into a decades-long future relationship with the Kremlin.
“We will not allow the plan to include nuclear energy into the sanctions to be implemented,” Orbán said last year when the prospect of new restrictions was first raised. “This is out of the question.”
A potential workaround would be to block new joint projects with Rosatom, forcing a long-term shift away from Russia’s nuclear industry. Earlier this month, two diplomats with knowledge of the backroom talks being held ahead of the Polish presidency told POLITICO the compromise was seen as a way to tighten the noose without facing a veto from Hungary.
“Russia is pooling efforts to become an indispensable part of the nuclear sector, too, as they did before with oil and gas,” one envoy said. However, even those loose restrictions could face opposition from Hungary.
Gas gambit
The return of Donald Trump to the White House also creates new challenges and opportunities for the Poles. While Trump has vowed to broker a deal to end the war in Ukraine, he has also pledged to boost America’s exports of LNG to Europe, with “drill, baby, drill” becoming a campaign rallying cry.
In a move intended to avoid a trade war with Washington, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has said the EU could look to Trump’s administration to help end its dependency on Moscow for gas.
“Why not replace it by American LNG, which is cheaper for us and brings down our energy prices? It’s something where we can get into a discussion, also [where] our trade deficit is concerned,” she said at a summit in Budapest last month.
While specific restrictions on imports of LNG for domestic use have never been proposed and would immediately be vetoed by Hungary, increasing United States gas extraction could create a market-based incentive to end purchases from Moscow.
And, for Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is relying on European fossil fuel purchases to fund his war on Ukraine, that could be bad news.
Suzanne Lynch and Zia Weise contributed reporting from Baku, Azerbaijan.
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