BRUSSELS — The EU’s bureaucracy-slashing crusade is coming for rules meant to bottle up methane — a climate-warming, air-polluting gas.
The argument is one that’s become commonplace in Europe: The rules are a good idea, but will impose unnecessary, contradictory and confusing requirements on EU firms that need a helping hand.
In this instance, it’s EU fuel importers in the crosshairs. Starting in 2027, they’ll face penalties for importing fuel that doesn’t comply with the new methane emission rules. There’s fear that might disadvantage companies bringing in U.S. fuel — just as Europe seeks to buy more of it to both placate the Trump administration and quit Russian energy.
In response, there’s a mounting push to revise the rules before they fully take effect. Seven countries — mostly in Central and Eastern Europe — are now circulating a proposal to trim the monitoring and reporting requirements for companies. The fossil fuel industry is eagerly supportive.
The issue will come to a head on Monday, when energy ministers gather in Luxembourg for a meeting. In typical EU fashion, the goal is to find a compromise solution, said two diplomats granted anonymity to discuss the closed-door discussions.
To proponents, the revisions are a common-sense way to preserve the EU’s green ambition while not crippling companies’ economic fortunes. To skeptics, however, it’s merely the fossil fuel industry, yet again, trying to gut climate-friendly legislation in favor of profit.
Either way, the outcome will reverberate across the EU-U.S. trade war and Europe’s campaign to sap Russia’s energy profits.
Methane, meet trade
The EU’s methane rules were initially designed to curtail leakage in the bloc’s fossil fuel supply chain. The gas spews into the atmosphere during fuel and coal production, acting as a potent pollutant and the second-highest contributor to global warming after CO2.
The regulations require EU fossil fuel importers and producers to measure, monitor, report and verify these methane emissions, while working to reduce them.
Earlier this year, however, rules were swept into EU-U.S. trade talks after President Donald Trump demanded Europe swallow billions more in American energy. Industry groups are now arguing that the law must be redone to ease that consumption.
“The EU is clearly keen to buy more American LNG,” said François-Régis Mouton, the European director of the International Association of Oil and Gas Producers. “But then at the same time, they put in place a methane emission regulation that totally jeopardizes this. We’re doing everything to reopen the methane regulation.”
Ahead of Monday’s energy ministers’ meeting, EU capitals have been preparing a consensus document that presses the European Commission, the EU’s executive in Brussels, to at least review the methane rules.
A draft of the document, seen by POLITICO, asks the Commission to “speedily assess” whether to pare back several energy laws, including the methane regulation. And it argues the rules “might impact the cooperation with economic operators from outside of the EU” — likely a veiled reference to the U.S. But it stops short of recommending specific changes.
The seven EU countries want to go further. They recommend specific changes to the penalty system and exemptions for some importers “in light of the new geopolitical context.” They also call for “flexibilities” to help bolster domestic gas production and identify several “redundant” measuring and monitoring rules they suggest dropping.
But they don’t suggest the EU completely revise the legislation, as industry lobbyists are demanding.
That middle-ground thinking is closer to the Commission’s public statements on the subject. EU Energy Commissioner Dan Jørgensen insisted last week that Brussels will not weaken the law’s ambition — but he did signal a willingness to tweak its implementation.
“We can see in the implementation [if] there are things that could be done better, in a different way, as long as it does not hurt the reduction targets,” he told POLITICO in an interview last week. “But we are not going to reopen it or take it back, backtrack it or anything like that.”
Still, green groups are exasperated that yet another climate-friendly regulation may get trimmed under the guise of keeping companies “competitive.” Already this year, Brussels has proposed trims, revisions and exemptions on everything from corporate sustainability requirements to a carbon border tax.
EU officials argue this will mostly reduce paperwork and redundancies while preserving green ambition. But the changes would inevitably scale back numerous requirements.
Methane is no different, argued Esther Bollendorff, senior gas policy coordinator at Climate Action Network Europe.
The proposed revision “aims to clear the way for more gas deals with the U.S.,” said Bollendorff. “It is unacceptable to dismantle the EU’s legislative framework based on industry lobbying.”
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