By Jorge Liboreiro

On a tranquil day in November 2011, the German chancellor welcomed the Russian president in the northeastern town of Lubmin. The two leaders were joined by the prime ministers of France and the Netherlands and the European Commissioner for Energy. Standing very close to each other, they all placed their hands on a huge white wheel on top of a valve and, with a big smile on their faces, posed for the photographers who were waiting for them.

“Today marks a remarkable, long-awaited event,” said Dmitry Medvedev, the then Russian president. “We are launching the first pipeline of Nord Stream, which opens a new page in our country’s cooperation with the European Union.”

Almost 14 years later, the president of the European Commission tore that page off the book and threw it into the flames, without regret or hesitation.

“The era of Russian fossil fuels in Europe is coming to an end,” Ursula von der Leyen said this week in a speech before the European Parliament. 

As it turns out, the era is not yet over. Despite a large-scale invasion, unprecedented rafts of sanctions and overwhelming evidence of war crimes, the European Union is, as of today, still purchasing a sizable amount of Russian fossil fuels, particularly gas.

Last year, the bloc spent €23 billion on Russian energy, a figure that, much to everybody’s embarrassment, surpassed the military assistance provided to Ukraine. The contradiction defies credibility: the war in Ukraine that the EU firmly opposes is being partially funded by the revenues of the Russian fuels that the EU consistently buys. Adding insult to injury, lucrative imports of Russian LNG not only continued unimpeded but increased by 9% last year. 

Brussels knows the situation is politically, economically and diplomatically untenable, and something must be done. With that view, the Commission presented this week a long-awaited roadmap to permanently eliminate Russia from the bloc’s energy mix. The key here is permanent: the proposal envisions a total and irreversible phase-out of Russian gas, oil and nuclear fuels, with no turning back. (Coal is the only product that has been fully eliminated.)

The roadmap combines gradual bans on gas contracts, steep tariffs on nuclear fuels, restrictions on Russia’s shadow fleet and stronger rules to verify the origin of energy imports. Notably, the legislative texts, which are yet to be unveiled, will fall under energy/trade policy and therefore necessitate only a qualified majority to be approved. This will help Brussels bypass the unanimity of sanctions, a foreign policy tool, that Hungary and Slovakia have used to block any attempt to prohibit gas purchases. The two countries didn’t wait long to furiously criticise the Commission’s initiative, saying it would imperil the EU’s competitiveness and raise consumer prices.

The protestations, though, barely made a splash. And it’s easy to see why: the political tide has turned in such a powerful and transformative manner that phasing out the entirety of Russian energy feels like the passage of time, something that flows naturally and cannot be stopped.

We shouldn’t, however, underestimate the dimension of the task ahead. For decades, the EU was the largest consumer of Russian fossil fuels. We bought enormous quantities, we spent billions of euros and we built entire sectors on the sole premise that the Kremlin would remain a reliable, low-cost supplier for years to come. The fateful launch of the Nord Stream pipelines, which Angela Merkel gleefully attended, bears witness to what some might call innocence and others idiocy.

The words of von der Leyen, who served as minister in four different cabinets under Merkel, demonstrate how much times have changed and how far the EU has travelled in just three years. Standing before the Parliament, the Commission chief defended her ambitious roadmap and ruled out, in no uncertain terms, a return to Russian energy after the war comes to an end. 

The controversial idea has been floated as part of a peace settlement brokered by the US, which has embraced no shortage of Russian talking points. “It will probably be interesting if the Americans use their influence on Europe and force it not to refuse Russian gas,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in late March, referring to the Nord Stream pipelines.

But von der Leyen made it clear this is a bridge the EU won’t cross but burn down.

“Some are still saying that we should reopen the tap of Russian gas and oil. This would be a mistake of historic dimensions. And we will never let it happen,” she told lawmakers in Strasbourg.

“Russia has proven, time and again, that it is not a reliable supplier. Putin has already cut gas flows to Europe in 2006, 2009, 2014, 2021, and throughout the war. How many times before they learn the lesson?”