BRUSSELS — The European Commission has proposed a plan to phase out Russian oil imports, stepping up its efforts to cut off a key source of funding for the Kremlin.
But an oil phaseout would still represent a dramatic shift for the E.U., which in March told the United States it couldn’t join a Russian energy embargo.
The oil plan is the centerpiece of E.U.’s sixth round of sanctions, a package that would also remove Russia’s biggest bank, Sberbank, and two others from the SWIFT payment system.
A draft plan was sent to the 27 E.U. member countries on Tuesday, to be discussed by ambassadors on Wednesday. It could be formally approved as early as the end of the week, according to diplomats and officials.
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the E.U. has worked closely with the United States and other allies to sanction Moscow, but it has struggled to unwind its reliance of Russian fossil fuels — a vulnerability U.S. officials and others warned about for years.
In 2020, the bloc imported about 35 percent of its oil from Russia, along with 40 percent of its natural gas and nearly 20 percent of its coal, according to the E.U. statistics office.
In March, when President Biden announced a U.S. ban on Russian oil and gas, the E.U. said it could only commit to reduce Russian gas imports by two-third by year’s end.
Nearly a month later, as graphic footage of atrocities in Bucha, Ukraine, started circulating, the E.U. moved ahead with a coal ban.
E.U. officials hinted that action on oil would be next — but talks stalled amid strong opposition from Germany, Austria and others countries.
Thanks to price increases, Russia has continued to rake in about the same amount of money from fossil fuel sales as it did before the invasion, according to estimates by the Wednesday Group, a team of experts tracking Russian energy sales. That adds up to about $1 billion a day, and possibly $1.5 billion a day, in revenue.
The oil deal finally gained momentum last week, after Germany — one of Russia’s biggest customers — said it had found alternative suppliers and would be comfortable with a gradual phaseout.
But getting to the point of a draft plan with a good chance of approval meant extensive debate on exceptions for Hungary and Slovakia, which said they need more time and money to upgrade their oil infrastructure, diplomats and officials said.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin and is an ongoing standoff with the E.U.
The E.U. has frozen Hungary’s pandemic recovery funds over concerns about democratic backsliding and rule of law breaches and last week triggered a mechanism that could result in the bloc holding back tens of billions of dollars in subsidies.
