In 2021, Europe was buying more gas from Russia than almost anywhere else on Earth — enough to fill hundreds of stadiums. By 2025, that number had shrunk to a fraction of what it was. The European Union has quietly pulled off one of the most dramatic energy turnarounds in modern history, and it happened in just a few years flat.
It all started in May 2022, when the European Commission launched a plan called REPowerEU. The name says it all: the goal was to power Europe with something other than Russian fossil fuels. Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine earlier that year had sent gas prices soaring and exposed a troubling reality. Countries across the EU had grown deeply dependent on Russian energy, and when prices spiked, so did electricity bills for millions of families.
The plan combined quick fixes with longer-term change. Countries scrambled to find new gas suppliers — Italy turned to Algeria, Azerbaijan, Libya, and Qatar. Germany, which had no working liquefied natural gas, or LNG, terminals at the start of 2022, raced to build them. LNG is gas that has been cooled into liquid form so it can be shipped across oceans on special ships, rather than flowing through pipelines. At the same time, EU leaders committed to building more solar panels, wind turbines, and other renewable energy sources that would eventually make imported gas less necessary at all.
The results have been striking. Russian gas imports into the EU fell from 152 billion cubic metres in 2021 to just 36 billion cubic metres in 2025. In practical terms, Russia went from supplying 45 percent of the EU's gas imports to only 12 percent. That is a drop of more than two-thirds in four years.
The EU is not stopping there. In June 2025, the European Commission proposed a new law to phase out all Russian gas and oil imports entirely by the end of 2027. That means by 2028, European homes and businesses would no longer rely on energy from Russia at all.
The shift has also tied into the EU's broader climate goals. REPowerEU builds on an earlier set of laws called the Fit for 55 package, which aims to cut the EU's net greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55 percent by 2030 and reach net-zero emissions by 2050. By burning less fossil fuel imported from anywhere, Europe is simultaneously trying to address climate change and avoid being held hostage by any single supplier.
Not every country moved at the same speed. Poland and the Baltic states had been working to reduce Russian energy ties for years because of longstanding security concerns. Germany and Austria, by contrast, had been strong supporters of pipelines like Nord Stream 2, which carried Russian gas directly under the Baltic Sea. The crisis changed those calculations for good.
For ordinary Europeans, the stakes were simple: when gas prices rise, electricity prices rise too, because many power plants run on gas. The REPowerEU plan was, at its heart, an effort to protect families from wild price swings and to make sure no single country could threaten Europe's energy security again.