BRUSSELS — The European Union will not backtrack on its ban on Russian fossil fuel imports or slow down its shift to renewables, even as the war in Iran sends energy costs soaring, Energy Commissioner Dan Jørgensen said Tuesday.
“There is no road back to dependency on Russian energy,” Jørgensen said at a panel at POLITICO’s Competitive Europe Summit. “We should not again ever import as much as one molecule.”
Jørgensen argued Europe has been for “too long” indirectly financing Russia’s war against Ukraine by buying Russian energy. “Russia has blackmailed member states. … They have weaponized energy against us,” he said.
His remarks come as a small group of EU leaders push for a rethink of the bloc’s relationship with Russia, which threatens to upend the implementation of the EU’s historic phase-out of Russian gas. The Commission is set to propose a similar ban on oil later this year.
