Baltic governments in June 2026 called for the European Union to accelerate the end of remaining Russian oil imports, while the bloc’s current framework targets a complete phase-out by the end of 2027.
The European Commission’s proposal of 17 June 2025 required member states still importing Russian oil to submit diversification plans as the route to ending those purchases, rather than imposing an immediate uniform ban. Later EU documents identified Hungary and Slovakia as the only two member states still buying Russian crude.
Council material published on 26 January 2026 said the diversification-plan requirement applies to those countries and stated that separate EU legislation is planned to phase out Russian oil imports by end-2027.
Commission data show the EU reduced Russian oil imports from 27% of its oil purchases at the start of 2022 to 2% in 2025, with residual imports totaling 9.7 million tonnes that year. Earlier EU sanctions had already cut flows sharply, with Eurostat reporting that imports of Russian crude oil and petroleum products fell to 1.4 million tonnes in March 2023 from an average monthly 15.2 million tonnes in 2019-2022 after the seaborne crude ban took effect in December 2022 and the petroleum products ban in February 2023.