EU civil war as Macron allowing Putin’s gas tankers to be fixed on its shores

Russian gas tankers are receiving repairs in French and Danish ports, with France’s president Emmanuel Macron coming under pressure to stop the practice.

Thanks to a loophole in sanctions, ’s fleet of Russian Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) tankers has been able to dock in French and Danish ports to receive repairs.

As a result, the Kremlin has been able to continue to export LNG and generate £168bn to finance its war machine since its full-scale invasion of in February 2022.

EU states are at loggerheads over the issue, with ten countries demanding France and Germany close the loophole, according to a leaked diplomatic document seen by The Times.

The Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Sweden are all calling on Emmanuel Macron and his German counterpart Olaf Scholz to act.

“The Russian LNG tanker fleet needs to be subject to targeted sanctions prohibiting docking and maritime services on EU territory,” the document said.

“As an end goal, it is necessary to ban the import of Russian gas and LNG at the earliest date possible.”

However, states like Greece have opposed sanctions on Russian LNG imports, and despite Macron saying in 2022 that Europe “will need to do without Russian gas completely”, in November 2024 French imports of Russian LNG hit a six-year high.

“If those two shipyards were off limits, it would put the whole logistics operations in doubt,” Malte Humpert, an Arctic shipping specialist at the High North News website, told The Times.

“They could get the service somewhere else but that would mean going well off their route.”

With energy crises across the continent, the EU has struggled to wean itself off Russian LNG.

Last year, a record 16.65 million tonnes of Russian LNG arrived in the EU, with only a fifth rerouted to countries outside the bloc.