More than a third of Russian oil imported into the Union ended up in Slovakia in 2024. Czechia has since switched to the western route, Slovakia remained on Druzhba

The European Court of Auditors published a special report on Wednesday on the REPowerEU plan, through which the Union committed to ending its dependence on Russian fossil fuels after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The main finding was picked up by news agencies and Slovak media alike: of the sum available for this purpose, which corresponds to an estimated investment need of nearly three hundred billion euros, member states had by April 2026 committed 54.3 billion, or eighteen percent. The deadline for meeting the milestones and targets of the Recovery and Resilience Facility expired on 31 August this year.

However, an annex to the same report contains a table that did not make it into the agency dispatch. It contains Eurostat data on imports of Russian oil and gas broken down by member state. For 2024, the data show that reported imports of Russian oil into the Union were confined to three countries, with more than a third of it falling to Slovakia.

Eighteen percent of three hundred billion

In 2022 the Commission estimated that meeting the REPowerEU targets by 2030 would require additional investments of approximately three hundred billion euros, and identified the REPowerEU chapters in the Recovery and Resilience Facility as the basis for financing them. "No new sources of financing were proposed," the report states. Member states initially committed 65 billion of the available sum; after the latest round of plan revisions, that figure stood at just 54.3 billion in April 2026. European Court of Auditors ↗

These are committed, not disbursed, funds — the report does not state how much of it actually ended up in projects. Meanwhile the window for fulfillment has closed: milestones and targets were to be met by 31 August 2026, states must submit final payment requests by the end of September, and the Commission is to disburse by the end of the year. The REPowerEU plan itself, however, runs until 2030, so the investments do not end with this deadline. European Commission ↗

The auditors add a sentence that is at the core of the whole report: although the Commission assumes that the gap between the committed sum and the estimated need will be bridged by national public and private investment, neither the Commission nor the member states were able to provide evidence to support that assumption. "At this stage it remains unclear how the REPowerEU plan can be fully implemented," the report states. European Court of Auditors ↗

"Four years after its launch, REPowerEU has stalled, even though several hundred billion euros have been made available," said Court member Mihails Kozlovs. Austria's ORF added to his statement that only three member states submitted their two-year progress report for 2025 on time, compared with seven in 2023. TASR ↗ ORF ↗

Three countries at the end of the pipeline

Annex VI of the report contains Eurostat data on imports of Russian oil and gas for the years 2021 to 2024, broken down by member state. The Union-wide picture for oil is unambiguous: from 112.4 million tonnes in 2021, imports fell to 11.7 million tonnes in 2024, a decline of ninety percent. Special Report 21/2026, Annex VI ↗

The country breakdown shows where the remaining 11.7 million tonnes ended up. Slovakia imported 4.0 million tonnes, Hungary 5.0 million, and Czechia 2.7 million. In the table, the sum of these three equals the Union's entire reported imports. All other countries show zero for 2024, with the exception of Germany, for which the table gives no figure. Slovakia alone thus accounted for more than a third of the Russian oil that entered the Union that year. Special Report 21/2026, Annex VI ↗

The direction of movement is notable. While imports for the Union as a whole fell by ninety percent, Slovakia's fell by twenty-seven percent over the same three years, from 5.5 to 4.0 million tonnes. Hungary's, by contrast, rose by 43 percent and in 2024 was higher than before the invasion. The explanation lies in the fact that the Union's sanctions hit Russian oil imported by sea, while deliveries via the Druzhba pipeline continued. Special Report 21/2026, Annex VI ↗ Trend ↗

The trio has since become a pair. Czechia completed the expansion of the TAL pipeline's capacity as part of the TAL-PLUS project and in mid-2025 switched to supply via the western route through TAL and IKL. Prime Minister Petr Fiala at the time described it as the end of dependence on Russian oil after nearly sixty years. Slovakia and Hungary have remained on Druzhba. Office of the Government of the Czech Republic ↗

The report also names Slovakia in connection with one of the shortcomings. It is among a group of four countries — along with Czechia, Poland and Portugal — facing significant delays in simplifying permitting procedures. It is also among the nine states whose two-year progress reports the auditors examined, finding major discrepancies in eight of them — the report does not specify which states these were, so nothing follows from this regarding Slovakia specifically. According to Annex II, as of October 2025 Slovakia had allocated 441.3 million euros in grants (excluding loans) to the REPowerEU chapter, representing 0.7 percent of the sum allocated by all states combined. Special Report 21/2026 ↗

For gas, the curve reversed

For gas the story is different. Imports of Russian gas into the Union fell from 153.2 billion cubic metres in 2021 to 37.8 billion in 2024, a decline of three-quarters. But between 2023 and 2024 it rose again, by thirteen percent. Imports of liquefied natural gas from Russia increased by 67 percent between 2021 and 2024. Special Report 21/2026, Annex VI ↗

Slovakia's curve reversed earlier than the Union's. From 3.5 billion cubic metres in 2021, imports fell to 2.4 billion in 2022, but then rose for two consecutive years, to 2.9 and finally 3.1 billion. In 2024 it thus stood at 87 percent of the pre-war level. During the period covered by the table, the Union, according to the report, introduced no sanctions on gas imports from Russia, whether piped or liquefied, with the sole exception of a ban on transshipment of liquefied gas in Union ports in effect since March 2025. Special Report 21/2026, Annex VI ↗

After 2024 this changed on two fronts. In the nineteenth sanctions package from October 2025, the Union banned imports of Russian liquefied gas, with long-term contracts affected from 1 January 2027. And separately from the sanctions, a regulation on the phase-out of Russian natural gas imports (EU/261/2026) is in force, which according to the auditors' report introduces a legally binding phase-out of imports by the end of 2027. European Commission ↗ European Court of Auditors ↗

The auditors note regarding this regulation that it contains no provision imposing direct sanctions on member states that fail to comply with the ban. Penalties for violating the ban are to be set by the member states themselves, according to the Commission, though the lower limit of their upper ceiling is harmonized: for legal entities, the maximum possible fine must reach at least 3.5 percent of worldwide annual turnover, or at least forty million euros, or at least 300 percent of the turnover from the given transaction. The penalty is thus aimed at importers, not governments. European Court of Auditors ↗ European Commission ↗

How foreign media covered the report

European newsrooms read the same document differently, and the difference is visible already in the headlines. Austria's ORF and Kleine Zeitung both presented it as a report on the energy transition — "The Union is far from the energy transition" — with Russia not mentioned in their headlines at all. ORF ↗ Kleine Zeitung ↗

Germany's Spiegel placed the report in its economics section, but with a reference to the war in Ukraine, and concluded in its lead paragraph that member states used little of the three hundred billion and that this will now come back to haunt them. Belgium's La Libre stated in its headline that European countries are not using the colossal sums made available to them, and introduced the text with a subheading about apparent results — meaning that at first glance it looks as though the targets have been met. Spiegel ↗ La Libre ↗

The Hungarian economic portal Portfolio published the MTI news agency dispatch under a headline about a devastating verdict, and the text also mentions that of the planned 103 gigawatts of new renewable capacity, only a negligible share is attributable to REPowerEU measures. For Slovak readers, the report arrived via a TASR dispatch, which Trend also picked up. It mentions Slovakia and states that the Union has almost eliminated imports of Russian oil, "with the exception of Slovakia and Hungary, which receive it via the Druzhba pipeline." It does not include import volumes by country. Portfolio ↗ TASR ↗

Limits of this view

The table ends with 2024, so it says nothing about 2025 or the current year. Volumes and the ranking of countries have changed since then — most visibly in the case of Czechia. The report itself also notes that Russian oil also reaches the Union indirectly via third countries, such as Turkey, China or India, and that no reliable data exist on how much reaches the Union this way.

The sum of the three countries in the table equals the aggregate for the whole Union, yet for Germany the table gives no figure for oil in 2024. The annex does not explain how the aggregate was derived or whether it involves any estimation.

The report is an audit of European funds, not an assessment of Slovak energy policy. It does not say whether Slovakia could have replaced pipeline deliveries more quickly, or at what cost — it states volumes and how much of the available money states have allocated. At the same time, the auditors also caution in the opposite direction: they say the Commission attributes the decline in gas imports too generously to the REPowerEU plan, since mild winters and reduced consumption by households and businesses amid high prices also contributed to it.

The cited sources do not, in the end, include a reaction from the Slovak government to the figures in the annex.

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