The European plan to phase out Russian fossil fuels has lost momentum. Four years after its launch, member states had committed just €54.3 billion of the €300 billion deemed necessary to achieve its targets—less than a fifth of the total.
The warning comes from the new report by the European Court of Auditors (ECA) on REPowerEU , the program launched in 2022 to progressively reduce Russian energy imports and accelerate the deployment of renewables, energy saving and interconnections.
“Four years after its launch, REPowerEU has stalled, despite the fact that several hundred billion euros have been made available,” said Mihails Kozlovs , the Tribunal member responsible for the audit.
The organization also detected a weak translation of the program into national policies. According to the report, most national energy and climate plans did not incorporate sufficient specific measures or objectives to achieve the goals of the European scheme.
The gap between the planned and actually committed investment volume leads the auditors to consider two possible explanations: that investment needs have been overestimated or that there is a real difficulty in converting objectives into concrete projects .
The problem is not limited to money.
The Court maintains that the additional renewable capacity created directly through the program is “insignificant” compared to the 103 GW target set within the European framework. The same weakness is evident in cross-border energy interconnections.
On this last front, the auditors identified only three measures specifically linked to the expansion of cross-border networks in two Member States, and one of them ended up being withdrawn.
Less Russian gas, but not everything can be explained by the plan
The European Union did manage to significantly reduce its exposure to Russian fossil fuels from 2022 onwards.
The sanctions caused a drastic drop in imports of Russian oil and also reduced the weight of gas coming from that country.
However, the Court cautions that not all of this decline can be directly attributed to the European plan . Additional factors include several mild winters and reduced consumption caused by high energy prices.
That distinction is important because one of the program's central objectives was to transform the energy crisis into a structural acceleration of renewables, grids, and diversification.
According to the auditors, that second part is progressing much more slowly.
The EU added a large amount of solar and wind capacity in recent years, but the ECT differentiates that overall growth from the volume that can be directly linked to measures financed by the program.
That is where the greatest distance from the original goals appears.
The report also comes at a time when electricity grids have become one of the main bottlenecks in Europe's energy transition. Without new transmission and interconnection capacity, the growth of renewables could lead to greater restrictions, curtailment, and periods of negative prices.
For the auditors, experience compels a review of the program's implementation in a geopolitical scenario that is once again showing volatility in international fossil fuel markets.
The risk, ultimately, is that Europe will reduce its dependence on Russia without developing at the same speed the clean energy generation, networks and infrastructure necessary to sustain long-term energy independence .