Europe’s attempt to rid itself of Russian gas has entered a more forensic phase. Having spent the past three years scrambling for alternative supplies, the European Commission is now turning its attention to what it buys, how it is labelled, and whether molecules arriving at the EU’s borders are really what exporters claim them to be. The latest target of this scrutiny is not Moscow directly, but the infrastructure through which gas reaches Europe from Türkiye, including volumes supplied by Azerbaijan.

The European Union has legally adopted a step-by-step prohibition on imports of Russian pipeline gas and liquefied natural gas, as part of its REPowerEU roadmap to end reliance on Moscow’s energy exports. A full ban on LNG imports will come into force from early 2027, and on pipeline gas by late 2027 at the latest. Before authorising entry into the EU, member states must now “verify the country where gas was produced.” This requirement underpins the mechanism forcing exporters to prove non-Russian origin for supplies

The immediate trigger was political. In November, a French MEP, Jean-Paul Garron, accused the EU of quietly circumventing its own sanctions by importing Russian gas disguised as Azerbaijani. Brussels dismissed the charge at the time, stressing that the Southern Gas Corridor, the pipeline system bringing Caspian gas via Georgia, Türkiye and Greece, has no technical link to Russia’s network. That remains true. Yet since then, the Commission has moved to impose additional verification requirements, forcing both EU member states and foreign suppliers to prove that gas entering the bloc is not of Russian origin.

The Commission’s June 2025 proposal to phase out Russian gas and oil imports entirely by the end of 2027 follows a decade-long effort to reduce reliance on Moscow’s energy leverage. Before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russia supplied as much as 40–45% of EU gas imports; by 2025, that share........

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