{"id":847966,"date":"2026-03-24T22:02:30","date_gmt":"2026-03-24T22:02:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/847966\/"},"modified":"2026-03-24T22:02:30","modified_gmt":"2026-03-24T22:02:30","slug":"eu-postpones-russian-oil-ban-as-iran-energy-shock-aggravates-rifts-euobserver","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/847966\/","title":{"rendered":"EU postpones Russian oil-ban, as Iran energy shock aggravates rifts \u2013 EUobserver"},"content":{"rendered":"

The EU is delaying a Russian oil ban, as the Iran war aggravates old frictions in European politics.<\/p>\n

The European Commission will no longer put forward a legal proposal to ban all Russian oil imports on 15 April as planned, it told press in Brussels on Tuesday (24 March).<\/p>\n

The commission said it might come out after the Easter break instead, without giving a new date, but warned against sensationalising the delay, as a nervous oil market looked for signs of how the Iran war-linked energy crisis <\/a>was being seen.<\/p>\n

It would still be a \u201cstrategic blunder\u201d to resume Russian oil-buying, a commission spokeswoman said, while pledging new measures to ban Russian nuclear energy imports as well later this year.<\/p>\n

Russia-neighbouring EU states have been calling for tougher energy sanctions for the past four years of full-blown Russian warfare in Ukraine and hybrid war on wider Europe.<\/p>\n

But the oil-ban delay was grist to the mill of pro-Moscow prime minister Viktor Orb\u00e1n\u2019s re-election campaign for 12 April<\/a> in Hungary, who has vetoed new sanctions on Russia\u2019s \u2018shadow fleet\u2019 of oil tankers and said the EU should drop old ones due to the Iran crisis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The EU is delaying a Russian oil ban, as the Iran war aggravates old frictions in European politics.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":847967,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5174],"tags":[217083,2000,299,5187,218484,218478,218481,239339,239337,218476,218479,218482,239338,218477,218480,218483],"class_list":{"0":"post-847966","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-eu","8":"tag-typedefinedterm","9":"tag-eu","10":"tag-europe","11":"tag-european","12":"tag-identifier24","13":"tag-identifier4297","14":"tag-identifier4308","15":"tag-identifier4420","16":"tag-nameenergy","17":"tag-nameeu-sanctions","18":"tag-namerussia","19":"tag-nameukraine","20":"tag-termcodeenergy","21":"tag-termcodeeu-sanctions","22":"tag-termcoderussia","23":"tag-termcodeukraine"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116286413263098205","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/847966","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=847966"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/847966\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/847967"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=847966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=847966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=847966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}