Recent attacks on civilian tankers in the Black Sea have disrupted loadings linked to the Caspian Pipeline Consortium, which carries about 80% of Kazakhstan’s crude oil exports and supplies a meaningful share of the EU’s oil imports, testing the resilience of the EU-Kazakhstan partnership. 

The relationship, formalized through the Enhanced Partnership and Cooperation Agreement (fully in force since 2020), has deepened into a more strategic partnership focused on connectivity, energy security, critical raw materials, transport and investment, as highlighted by President Tokayev’s June 2026 visit to Brussels and related agreements. 

A mature partnership requires not only expanding economic and infrastructure links but also jointly protecting lawful trade and export routes under stress, allowing both sides to diversify interdependence and strengthen mutual resilience.

Recent attacks on civilian tankers in the Black Sea have disrupted loadings linked to the Caspian Pipeline Consortium, the corridor that carries around 80 per cent of Kazakhstan’s crude oil exports. For the European Union, which sourced just under 13 per cent of its crude oil imports from Kazakhstan in 2025, this is not a remote regional problem. It is a test of whether the EU-Kazakhstan partnership can protect lawful trade and resilient energy supplies under stress. 

Since independence in 1991, Kazakhstan’s diplomacy has been built around connectivity: widening the routes through which goods, services, capital and information move, and using those links to strengthen sovereignty, resilience and strategic room for manoeuvre. A deeper relationship with the EU – Kazakhstan’s leading trade and investment partner – follows directly from that logic. 

That trajectory was formalised through the........

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