According to a statement from the European Commission on 3 December, this year will be the last for the Union to receive Russian gas imports – a moment that the bloc has been building towards since Moscow’s 2022 full-blown invasion of Ukraine.
Before then the European gas landscape was dominated by Russia, which provided roughly 45% of the EU’s total gas imports (approximately 150bn cubic metres per year). At that time, Algeria was a reliable but secondary partner, accounting for only 8% to 12%.
The map has since been radically redrawn. Algeria has emerged as the Union’s largest gas supplier via pipeline after Norway in the pipeline sector, supplying nearly 20% of the EU’s pipeline imports.
On 11 April 2022, then-Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi signed a landmark agreement with Algeria’s President Abdelmadjid Tebboune to increase gas deliveries through the Transmed pipeline. This was quickly followed on 15 June 2022 by a historic tripartite memorandum of understanding in Cairo between the EU, Egypt and Israel, aimed at securing a stable flow of East Mediterranean gas to European shores via Egyptian liquefaction plants.
Even as the COP27 summit in Sharm El-Sheikh that November shifted the global focus to the green transition, the underlying subject remained clear: Europe was desperate for African gas supplies, and African leaders were ready to negotiate.
Now, only months before the total divorce from Russian gas exports is due, the question is whether the shift is permanent. Despite the urgency of the EU Commission’s REPowerEU framework, the Union remains internally fractured. States such as Slovakia and Hungary continue to push for legal exemptions for Russian gas, which also finds commercial backdoors into European ports.
Furthermore, European demand swings and strict new environmental frameworks have caused institutional investment into Southern Mediterranean gas and assorted infrastructure projects to fall short of expectations. Meanwhile, North African partners struggle to reconcile these inconsistent signals with their own booming domestic demand.
Overestimated deliverability
According to data from think tank Bruegel, Russian pipeline flows through Ukraine declined sharply after 2022, averaging around 44m cubic metres per day (about 16bn cubic metres per year) in 2024 – far lower than pre‑war pipeline deliveries. The vacuum has been filled mainly by Norwegian pipeline gas and a large surge in global liquefied natural gas (LNG) supplies.
“Remaining exposure is now highly concentrated,” says Ugnė Keliauskaitė, research analyst at Bruegel and one of the authors of its latest report. “Hungary and Slovakia continue to rely on Russian pipeline gas via TurkStream, while Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain, Greece, and France still import Russian LNG, mainly for commercial rather than security reasons.”
While North African countries have stepped up to provide more gas, Keliauskaitė says the shift is far from complete.
“In the short to medium term, the EU overestimated how quickly partner countries could deliver more gas.”
The biggest mismatch was with Egypt, she points out. There, domestic demand and production challenges limited exports. Egyptian LNG exports saw a severe collapse from 2023 to 2024, with winter season exports of about 0.9m tonnes – down roughly 79% year‑on‑year – as domestic production lagged and internal demand expanded.
Algeria faces a similar, if less acute, internal squeeze: while it remains Europe’s southern pillar, a demographic explosion and annual growth in domestic energy use are steadily eating into its export surplus.
“For Algiers, the 2022 [Ukraine] crisis was seen first and foremost as a commercial opportunity, but one that came with no strings attached,” says Algerian political analyst Zine Labidine Ghebouli.
He notes that while Algeria was happy to step in as a “trusted partner”, its primary loyalty remains to its own industrialisation, highlighting that without massive, long-term European investment in Algerian upstream infrastructure, the country will prioritise its own booming internal market over European energy security.
Algeria’s domestic energy demand has been rising structurally for over a decade: gas consumption increased by around 70% between 2008 and 2018, driven by power generation, residential use and industry, and reached around 60bn cubic metres in 2023, with demand growing at an average 6% annually.
Despite growing internal demand, Algeria has continued to supply significant gas volumes abroad. Total Algerian gas exports, both through pipeline and as LNG, climbed from about 39bn cubic metres in 2020 to nearly 49bn cubic metres in 2024.
Exports to the EU have, however, not increased at the same pace. According to Bruegel data, Algerian deliveries to EU countries fell from around 37bn cubic metres in 2021 to 32bn cubic metres in 2024. This shortfall was not only due to Algeria’s production constraints but also reflects weaker demand from key EU buyers.
The Elcano Royal Institute in Madrid points out that in Italy, lack of demand meant that gas sent through the Transmed pipeline fell to 21bn cubic metres in 2024, well below the 33.5bn cubic metres capacity. “This dynamic matters because the short-term dips in EU demand contribute to uncertainty,” says Bruegel’s Ugnė Keliauskaitė. “The EU can hardly commit to stable gas imports, as its demand will keep declining due to the electrification of heating and renewable electricity generation.”
Shift from gas to renewables complicates long-term planning
Europe’s renewables shift also means that its energy strategy is far from straightforward. On the one hand, the EU urgently needs alternative suppliers to replace Moscow’s gas; on the other, it is accelerating renewables, electrification and methane-reduction targets. This dual approach sends mixed signals: European countries ask North Africa to increase deliveries, yet declining demand projections and stricter environmental standards contradict that push and divert investment elsewhere.
“There’s a prolonged, significant role for gas in the EU, that is true, but it’s also driving, especially in advanced economies, the push to get gas as clean as possible,” says Alberto Rizzi, policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR). “There’s a race between gas-producing countries to deliver slightly cleaner, lower-emission gas in order to be the one supplying the EU. The problem is that the deadlines and current requirements the EU is putting in place are very dangerous for Algeria or Egypt, because they really struggle to meet these kinds of targets. Algeria, in particular, has a very poor history of methane emissions and has only recently begun to tackle them.”
The current European framework seeks to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions across the energy sector, while maintaining security of supply. Under its “Fit for 55” package and related directives the EU aims to cut methane emissions from energy operations by at least 30% by 2030, while ramping up renewable electricity generation and electrification of heating and transport.
North Africa has the potential to deliver significantly cleaner energy than it currently does. The International Energy Agency (IEA) report The Future of Electricity in the Middle East and North Africa notes that solar photovoltaic capacity across the region is expected to increase tenfold by 2035, helping renewables rise from about 6% of generation today to roughly a quarter of the electricity mix. However, progress has been limited: in recent years, Europe has often prioritised short‑term cost savings over reliable partnerships with African suppliers.
“EU consumers preferred cheaper gas options, such as those from rising US LNG exports, and chose to reduce their demand rather than pay a premium to increase imports from Algeria, Egypt and Qatar,” says Keliauskaitė.
Forging more reliable partnerships
Ghebouli says that reliable partners tend to get better deals. “Countries that have mostly proven to be reliable partners throughout history can benefit from a very preferential price, [as does] Italy.
Other countries that do a hot on-and-off energy partnership with Algeria benefit from the gas, but according to the general average price on global markets.” In this context, Algeria’s state-owned gas company Sonatrach has widened its customer base beyond traditional EU markets.
In 2024 Turkey became the main destination for Algerian LNG, followed by France, Spain and Italy, highlighting Ankara’s growing role in Sonatrach’s export portfolio. According to market data, Turkey imported around 4.3m tonnes of Algerian LNG in 2024, while China received about 0.4m tonnes, underscoring Algeria’s efforts to expand beyond the EU amid fluctuating European demand.
Missing carrot
“What has been lacking in the European approach is balance,” says ECFR’s Alberto Rizzi. “They put on the ‘stick’ – the methane regulation – but, in my view, didn’t fully consider the ‘carrot’ that should have accompanied it. And if you are now deciding that North Africa is one of your major suppliers, or a region you need to rely on more, then you should try to establish a workable gas relationship.”
Keliauskaitė says pragmatic environmental regulations are key to a more reliable partnership. “The EU’s methane standards could complicate gas relations with suppliers such as Algeria and Egypt. But if implemented pragmatically, they could become a positive lever for cooperation, supporting upstream modernisation in Algeria and Egypt and strengthening the long-term reliability of gas partnerships rather than undermining them.”
Some initiatives already show how European support can help bridge the gap between climate goals and energy cooperation. In Algeria, the EU and German co‑financed TaqatHy+ programme – backed with around €28m from the EU – is accelerating renewable energy deployment, green hydrogen development and energy‑efficiency improvements, while also tackling methane emissions and gas flaring through technology and capacity building. At the regional level, the EU has signed a €300m guarantee agreement with German development bank KfW and subsidiary DEG to support the green transition across the Middle East and North Africa.
But there is a need to move towards a more holistic vision. Until now, Europe has mostly pursued country-by-country deals: Italy, Spain and France have negotiated individual gas supply agreements, often prioritising short-term delivery over broader regional planning. “Within the European Commission there have been discussions on how to align the EU’s green energy transition policy across all of North Africa rather than having… bilateral transactional relationships with Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia,” says Ghebouli.
Regional fragmentation
The bilateral focus means that regional disputes have not been adequately addressed: Algeria is currently blocking gas exports via Morocco to Spain amid a diplomatic falling-out between Algiers and Rabat. Such disputes further slow regional integration and hinder efforts to optimise energy efficiency across North Africa. “Nobody is willing to put political capital into actually being bold enough to say: ‘let’s go for regional integration and let’s solve the issues.’ The European Union and its member states are happy to get their interest from whatever parties while keeping a balance with all North African countries just to avoid the worst,” Ghebouli observes.
ECFR’s Rizzi stresses that this fragmented approach carries risks beyond immediate energy deliveries: securing gas volumes alone does not guarantee stable political relations. “It didn’t happen with Russia, and it might not happen even with weaker partners,” he says.
To avoid repeating past patterns of vulnerability, Rizzi argues, energy partnerships must be complemented by broader economic and political engagement: “building on top of the energy ties, but also going into the ‘dirty work’ of economic and political relationships to ensure bilateral deals work well.”
In other words, without deliberate regional integration and long-term political strategy, Europe may meet its short-term gas needs, but it risks missing the broader potential of expanded North African energy cooperation.