EU postpones methane rules for oil and gas imports: What Brussels is planning now

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The EU Commission wants to apply climate protection rules for imported oil, gas and coal only from early 2028 due to the current energy price crisis – significantly later than originally planned. In Brussels, officials are looking for ways to combat the runaway energy prices, the agency's approach: let certain climate rules kick in later.

The EU methane rules are actually intended to reduce emissions from the energy sector. Given the runaway energy prices, the Commission wants to loosen this climate protection measure for the greenhouse gas methane for the time being, as several agencies report from Strasbourg.

Which rules are affected?

Specifically, it concerns requirements for imported energy sources: the methane emissions that occur during the extraction, transport and processing of oil, gas and coal outside the EU are only to be more strictly monitored from early 2028. ad-hoc-news.de writes that the postponement concerns

the European Commission wants to apply climate protection rules for imported oil, gas and coal only from early 2028 due to the energy price crisis.

This pushes the launch of stricter import requirements back by several years.

What remains open

The decision has not yet been made. As Die Zeit reports, citing Commission circles, the authority still has to officially present the proposal – and both the EU countries and the European Parliament must approve. Only then will the postponement become legally effective. Until then: the old deadlines remain on the table, concrete details on the duration of the postponement and on exemptions still have to be negotiated.

What this means

For energy imports into the EU, little changes in the short term, since the postponement must first go through the ordinary legislative process. Should the plan be implemented, methane requirements for imports would not take effect in the coming months but only in 2028 – critics see this as a weakening of climate protection, the Commission justifies the step with the acute burden of high energy prices. Berlin has not yet taken a final position, according to Handelsblatt.