The Reality of Europe’s Energy Dependence

Viktoriia Fylymonova is a first-year Philosophy, Politics and Economics student. (viktoriia.fylymonova.25@ucl.ac.uk)

Introduction

The EU has shifted toward greater use of renewable, domestically produced energy over the last decade. Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, rising tensions in the Middle East, and other major conflicts, it is evident that the Union remains heavily dependent on external energy suppliers. But while Europe has acknowledged its structural reliance on imports, the change has not been rapid: oil and gas still dominate transport and heating, and renewable expansion is slow. As a result, the EU has diversified its suppliers rather than achieving true self‑sufficiency.

Today, 58% of the EU’s energy still comes from net imports [1]. Most European economies are in a default condition: high energy demand, limited domestic fossil production, and a system that still relies heavily on imported fuels. So how fossil-heavy is it? One of the largest energy sources is oil and petroleum products [2]. In 2023, oil remained the largest energy source in the EU economy: oil and petroleum products accounted for 37.6% of gross available energy, natural gas 20.4%, and solid fossil fuels 9.4%, meaning 67.4% of the EU’s energy still came from coal, oil, and gas [3].

These fuels were the most import-dependent in 2023 [4].

• Oil and petroleum products: the EU imported 94.9% of its consumption.

• Natural gas: imports cover 90.0% of EU gas demand.

• Solid fossil fuels: 40.8% of solid fossil fuels consumed were imported.

This is why energy dependence is no longer just a question of “who we buy from”; it is increasingly a system and supply-chain question.

The supplier breakdown highlights this dependence. In 2024, the EU’s extra-EU imports show that key fuels still come from a few external partners [5]: petroleum oils from the US (16.1%), Norway (13.5%), and Kazakhstan (11.5%); LNG from the US (45.3%), Russia (17.5%), and Algeria (10.7%); and pipeline gas from Norway (45.6%), Algeria (19.3%), and Russia (16.6%).

Two conclusions follow: first, replacing Russia has meant leaning harder on other exporters, especially Norway and the US, for gas and oil. Second, even after 2022, Russia still appears in Eurostat’s 2024 breakdown of the import mix for LNG and pipeline gas.

The European Commission notes that the EU reduced Russia’s share of gas imports from 45% to 19%, but also acknowledges a rebound in Russian gas imports in 2024, which is why it presented a plan aimed at fully ending that dependency. Europe has moved away from a single dominant supplier but has not escaped imports as a structural dependency.

Why Europe imports

First, there is a lack of cheap, abundant domestic fossil resources, and production has been declining. Eurostat reports that over 2013-2023 EU production dropped for [6]: natural gas (-70.5%), solid fossil fuels (-46.4%), and oil and petroleum products (-35.9%). This decline is not just due to geology and depletion, but also policy. Many countries have chosen to restrict or phase down domestic extraction for climate and environmental reasons, leading to less domestic supply.

Second, replacing oil is slow because transport dominates energy use and electrifies slowly. Oil and petroleum remain the largest share of final energy use, and transport is the biggest consuming sector [7]. As long as transport and key industrial uses rely on oil, Europe will keep importing large volumes of fuel and remain exposed to external suppliers.

Third, there is a lack of a fully integrated internal energy market, and fragmentation has costs. The EU is a single market, but energy systems still have major national features: different generation mixes, infrastructure bottlenecks, and uneven interconnections. The EU has therefore set an electricity interconnection target of 15% by 2030 [8]. This matters because better EU-wide interconnection can reduce dependence on third countries by allowing member states to share balancing resources and renewable surpluses, allowing the EU to function as a single system.

Finally, even a clean-energy future still depends on materials, components, and new fuels. This is the part that often gets missed: even if Europe replaces fossil fuels with renewables, it still needs supply chains.

The Critical Raw Materials Act sets 2030 benchmarks for domestic capacity: 10% extraction, 40% processing, and 25% recycling of strategic raw materials [9]. It also includes a diversification: no more than 65% of the EU’s annual consumption of each strategic raw material at any relevant processing stage should come from a single third country [10]. It reduces risks of relying on external suppliers and boosts the EU’s energy capacity. Similarly, the Net-Zero Industry Act aims for the EU’s manufacturing capacity to make 40% of the net-zero technologies it needs by 2030 [11]. Even here, the EU remains partly import-dependent: REPowerEU targets 10 million tonnes produced and 10 million tonnes imported of renewable hydrogen by 2030 [12]. So ‘clean fuels’ can still mean imports.

Why energy autonomy isn’t the priority

Full energy autonomy sounds attractive, but it is expensive. Building domestic supply after years of reliance on external suppliers means paying for high-cost resilience: more infrastructure, redundancy, and often higher prices in the short run. Politicians and citizens tend to prefer cheaper, faster alternatives that protect living standards, because taxpayers’ money can be spent on other priorities instead of rebuilding supply chains from scratch. That is why the EU usually chooses “manageable resilience”: diversification, storage, demand response, and interconnections, rather than strict self-sufficiency.

The EU also depends on ‘shared sovereignty’: while the Member States aim to reduce vulnerability by switching to more integrated systems, aiming to incerase cross-border electricity connections by 15% by 2030 [13], the goal seems less realistic because of geography, high costs and complex permitting rules, especially for islands and peripheral regions (e.g. Celtic (Ireland-France) Interconnector). So the target of ‘self-sufficiency’ by the union would work only if grids and interconnectors expand fast enough to match renewables, which is slow and uneven in practice.

Lastly, the political objective today is not perfect autonomy but lower exposure. Europe’s focus is on reducing dependence on risky suppliers, stabilising prices, and meeting climate goals at the same time. The EU is prioritising energy security through diversification and transition, because full independence would be economically painful and politically difficult to justify.

The EU’s response

Cutting demand through efficiency is the first policy tool. The EU sets the goal of reducing final energy consumption by 11.7% by 2030 [14]. The number does not sound revolutionary, but the logic is powerful: efficiency reduces dependence without requiring new imports or new domestic extraction. It is “invisible” progress: lower bills, demand, and fewer opportunities for external suppliers to influence Europe.

The second priority is accelerating renewables and electrification. The revised target of reaching 42.5% renewables in the EU energy mix [15] suggests that the ambition is real, but also highlights how large the gap is. When renewables accounted for 24.5% of energy consumption in 2023, it became clear that the main challenge is not whether renewables work, but whether Europe can scale them fast enough. The European Council’s decision to temporarily accelerate permitting for renewables and to add provisions that fast-track grids is significant: it tries to remove the delays that slow the transition more than technology does.

Yet renewables alone do not solve dependence if the system cannot carry and balance electricity reliably, so the third focus is flexible infrastructure. The 15% interconnection target is the point where “fragmentation” turns into a physical barrier. Without modern grids and stronger cross-border links, Member States either overbuild expensive backup at home or remain reliant on imported fuels for balancing when wind and solar are low. Infrastructure is slow and costly, but it is also what makes the EU’s “single energy system” idea realistic.

Simultaneously, Europe is strengthening short-term security while the transition is still incomplete. The gas storage regulation established binding targets: 80% by November 2022 and 90% by November 2023, and each subsequent year [16]. The point is not to make gas “independent,” but to reduce vulnerability to supply shocks and winter price spikes while overall gas demand declines over time.

Finally, the EU is reshaping the supply chains of green energy, because energy dependence is no longer only about fuel. The main approach is to cap single-country dependence and raise domestic capability.

The Critical Raw Materials Act sets benchmarks for extraction, processing, and recycling by 2030 [17], including a diversification rule: no more than 65% of annual consumption of each strategic raw material at relevant processing stages should come from a single third country [18]. The Net-Zero Industry Act adds the industrial side, aiming for 40% domestic manufacturing capacity for key net-zero technologies by 2030 [19].

Shrinking dependence requires investment, political discipline, and willingness to accept short-term costs, but doing nothing leaves Europe exposed to external shocks, conflict-driven price spikes, and suppliers that can use its energy needs as leverage. These objectives do not eliminate imports, and they do not pretend to. Their purpose is to make dependencies less concentrated and less weaponisable - a more realistic destination for the EU.

Works Cited

[1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7]

Eurostat (2025) Energy statistics – an overview. Available at: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?oldid=672956 (Accessed: 24 December 2025).

[5]

Eurostat (2025) Imports of energy products to the EU down in 2024. Available at: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/w/ddn-20250321-1 (Accessed: 24 December 2026).

[8, 13]

European Commission (2025) Electricity interconnection targets. Available at: https://energy.ec.europa.eu/topics/infrastructure/electricity-interconnection-targets_en (Accessed: 24 December 2025).

[9, 17]

European Commission (2024) European Critical Raw Materials Act. Available at: https://commission.europa.eu/topics/competitiveness/green-deal-industrial-plan/european-critical-raw-materials-act_en(Accessed: 24 December 2025).

[10, 18]

International Energy Agency (IEA) (2024) European Critical Raw Materials Act. Available at: https://www.iea.org/policies/17662-european-critical-raw-materials-act (Accessed: 24 December 2025).

[11, 19]

European Commission (2024) Net-Zero Industry Act. Available at: https://commission.europa.eu/topics/competitiveness/green-deal-industrial-plan/net-zero-industry-act_en (Accessed: 24 December 2025).

[12]

European Commission (2025) Hydrogen (EU energy system). Available at: https://energy.ec.europa.eu/topics/eus-energy-system/hydrogen_en (Accessed: 24 December 2025).

[14]

European Commission (2024) Energy efficiency targets. Available at: https://energy.ec.europa.eu/topics/energy-efficiency/energy-efficiency-targets-directive-and-rules/energy-efficiency-targets_en (Accessed: 24 December 2025).

[15]

European Commission (2024) Renewable energy targets. Available at: https://energy.ec.europa.eu/topics/renewable-energy/renewable-energy-directive-targets-and-rules/renewable-energy-targets_en (Accessed: 24 December 2025).

[16]

Council of the European Union (2025) Gas storage: Council greenlights 2-year extension of reserves filling rules to safeguard winter supply. Available at: https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2025/07/18/gas-storage-council-greenlights-2-year-extension-of-reserves-filling-rules-to-safeguard-winter-supply/ (Accessed: 24 December 2025).