By the end of 2025, the European Union had paid over €20 billion more than the conditional base level for oil purchases. The additional burden is due to the fact that after abandoning Russian raw materials, purchase prices for European importers remained high.

Sanctions restrictions came into force at the end of 2022: first, the EU stopped maritime deliveries of Russian oil, and then extended the ban to petroleum products. This caused a major market restructuring and an increase in prices. While in 2021 the average price per barrel for EU countries was around €57.4, by 2025 it had already reached €64.3.

At the same time, purchase volumes are gradually declining. At the end of last year, the EU imported approximately 3.3 billion barrels of oil, compared to 3.5 billion a year earlier and 3.4 billion barrels in 2021. Despite the decline in physical imports, total expenditures have increased: while spending amounted to approximately €193.8 billion before the restrictions were introduced, it rose to €212.3 billion in 2025.

Thus, additional costs for 2025 alone are estimated at €22.7 billion. For the previous three years, from 2022 to 2024, the total overpayment, according to the agency's calculations, approached €260 billion. Overall, since the beginning of the sanctions period, the additional financial burden on EU countries has exceeded €280 billion.

European Commissioner for Energy Dan Jorgensen said that in early 2026, the European Commission plans to present a legislative initiative to completely ban Russian oil imports into the European Union.