EU countries demand from the European Commission to strengthen the rules for the import of LNG from Russia

Several EU member states are demanding that the European Commission introduce reporting rules on LNG imports from Russia.

Austria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, France, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg and Sweden sent a joint letter to the European Commission on this matter. Poland also supported the appeal, but did not sign the document due to the upcoming presidential elections, writes Gospodarka Morska.

The signatories of the petition stated that, as of today, the import of Russian LNG to European terminals is increasing. The problem is that it is difficult to determine the responsible gas suppliers, since there is no publicly available information about them, as well as about the volumes of LNG purchases. Therefore, it is not known whether the sanctions are being violated.

“We consider it important to ensure full transparency of Russian natural gas imports and to clarify the identity of natural gas suppliers who import Russian LNG,” the letter states.

The signatory countries noted that the European Commission should strengthen the “obligation to report on Russian LNG offloading operations”, as publicly available data do not provide a “full picture” in this regard. States want the EC to publish the data collected in this way.

It will be recalled that Moscow used European ports to transship gas to other ships, and then transported raw materials to other places, for example, to Asia. The 14th package of EU sanctions adopted in June prohibited such transshipment, but the restrictions did not lead to a ban on the import of Russian LNG.