The European Commission is considering postponing by three years the sanctions against importers of oil, gas and coal that will not be in compliance with the Methane Regulation (2024/1787). A Commission working document, which was leaked to the press on Thursday 28 May, recommends that Member States not apply the sanctions provided for in that Regulation in cases where importers fail to comply before 2030.
When it was adopted, the Regulation provided that rules on the measurement, reporting and verification (MRV) of methane emissions from imports into European Union and their equivalence with European standards would apply from 1 January 2027. This new recommendation, which has not been officially issued, would be valid “except in the event of large-scale fraudulent non-compliance with these obligations”, without any further details at this stage.
Answering a question, on Friday 29 May, Anna-Kaisa Itkonen, the Commission spokesperson for energy, said that the recommendations intended for Member States are still being drawn up and will be presented by the summer. She did not confirm anything on the substance.
Contacted by Agence Europe, the cabinet of Dan Jørgensen, the European Commissioner for Energy, also did not wish to comment.
A recurring request from lobbies. This is a repeated request from industry lobbies (see EUROPE 13852/12) and several EU Member States (see EUROPE 13773/12).
According to the gas and oil industries, which are calling for a postponement of the Regulation’s obligations (stop the clock initiative), the current legislation would not leave them enough time to collect the necessary information from their suppliers and report it within the prescribed deadlines. Some of them go further, claiming that there is no way of complying with this European legislation, despite it having been adopted on 15 July 2024, and that it could create a risk to European energy security.
“We want to comply with this Regulation”, says Alain Mathuren, Communication Director at FuelsEurope, the trade organisation for Europe’s fuels industry.
“But some elements are missing that the Commission has not included in this legislation and for which we are awaiting adequate solutions”, adds Edoardo Rossi, Policy Adviser at FuelsEurope. “We need an effective compliance system and accreditation for verification”.
FuelsEurope explains that the information collected from suppliers must comply with European emissions standards, which is currently the case for only a small number of importers. If it does not, there is a risk of sanctions, which could encourage industry not to import enough gas and oil and thus create an energy shortage in the EU, according to them.
To respond to industry concerns, the Commission published, on 24 March 2026, a question-and-answer document for importers to help them comply with that legislation.
A text that nevertheless is non-binding as regards emission reductions. “The Commission’s leaked recommendations repeat the industry’s narrative”, laments Flora Witkowski, Gas Policy Coordinator for the NGO CAN Europe. “It starts from the assumption that implementing sanctions creates a risk to energy security, even though that has not in fact been proven”, she continues, asserting that these are “political, not technical, recommendations that will create a pull effect”.
Flora Witkowski regrets that no mechanism is in place to ensure that Member States continue working on implementing that legislation by 2030. The only State that has so far developed a model with sanctions is Denmark, she explains.
As for importers, “the only obligation they have under this Regulation is to produce MRV reports and an information obligation”, she continues. “They are not required, for example, to ensure that their exporters put in place concrete measures to reduce methane emissions”.
Indeed, the Methane Regulation was conceived, from the outset in 2020, as a text designed to gather reliable data on the origin of methane emissions and the baseline level (see EUROPE 12854/12). It does not provide for binding targets concerning the reduction of methane emissions. However, it includes other mitigation measures, notably the repair of methane leaks and limits on venting and flaring.
Read the Commission’s recommendations for importers: https://aeur.eu/f/m3w (Original version in French by Nadège Delépine)