The European Commission announced Monday that the EU will end its reliance on Russian energy exports, citing security concerns.

This announcement coincided with the release of the REPowerEU Roadmap, which serves as a follow-up to 2022’s REPowerEU Plan. The 2022 plan was launched in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and marked a commitment to diversifying the EU’s energy supplies in order to reduce reliance on Russia, save energy, and shift towards clean sources of energy. This initiative saw notable success from 2022-2023, such as reducing Russian gas imports from 45 percent to 15 percent. However, imports jumped to 19 percent in 2024. The newly announced Roadmap included an EU-wide commitment to ending all Russian gas imports by the end of 2027, as well as a “gradual and well-coordinated” phaseout of all Russian energy imports. It also reiterated the EU’s goal of reducing fossil fuel reliance and reducing energy costs and consumption.

Speaking about the Roadmap, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said:

The war in Ukraine has brutally exposed the risks of blackmail, economic coercion and price shocks. With REPowerEU, we have diversified our energy supply and drastically reduced Europe’s former dependency on Russian fossil fuels. It is now time for Europe to completely cut off its energy ties with an unreliable supplier. And energy that comes to our continent should not pay for a war of aggression against Ukraine. We owe this to our citizens, to our companies and to our brave Ukrainian friends.

EU states will be required to submit plans to the commission on how they plan to contribute to these goals by the end of the year. Legislative proposals to the commission will begin next month.