Brussels calls for end to EU reliance on Russian gas

The European Commission has said the EU can cut its dependency on Russian gas by two-thirds this year and end its reliance on Russian supplies of the fuel “well before 2030”.

The calculations were set out in a policy paper on energy prices published on Tuesday, but will only become a reality if the EU’s 27 member states follow the recommendations.

Frans Timmermans, the European Commission vice-president in charge of the bloc’s energy transition, said the EU needed to become more independent in its energy choices:

Renewables are a cheap, clean, and potentially endless source of energy and instead of funding the fossil fuel industry elsewhere, they create jobs here. Putin’s war in Ukraine demonstrates the urgency of accelerating our clean energy transition.

The commission is calling on EU member states to boost energy efficiency and speed up the transition to renewables already planned under the EU’s green deal.

Separately, EU heads of state and government are ready to pledge to “phase out our dependency on Russian gas, oil and coal imports”, according to a draft statement that the leaders will discuss at a summit in Versailles on Thursday and Friday. But the text seen by the Guardian does not mention any date to end Russian fossil fuel imports. This means at the moment, this text is little more than a restatement of existing policy - the EU has already promised to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050.