Greece Blocks LNG Sanctions

Greece blocked the EU's 21st Russia sanctions package on 17 July, refusing to accept a ban on European ships carrying Russian liquefied natural gas to buyers in Asia and elsewhere (Euronews, Topontiki/Reuters). EU foreign-policy sanctions need unanimity, so one objection from Athens was enough to freeze the whole file. Ambassadors moved the vote to 23 July.

The delay is not the real story. The mechanism is. The EU wants to squeeze Russia, but it does so through companies that still have contracts, ships, loans and payrolls. Every government with an exposed industry can turn that exposure into a price for agreement. Malta should recognise the dynamic: small and medium member states often defend a domestic economic model in Brussels while insisting they still support the European line.

How sanctions became a shipping fight

EU sanctions against Russia now go well beyond banning goods. They increasingly target the services that allow trade to happen: transport, insurance, financing and payment processing. Remove those services, and moving cargo becomes much harder, even when the cargo itself is not physically stopped at the border.

Greece's objection sits exactly there. Athens is not defending Russian gas imports into Europe. It is defending the right of Greek-owned vessels to carry Russian LNG from Arctic terminals to buyers outside the EU. The exposure is concentrated in one company: Dynagas, controlled by shipowner George Prokopiou, operates 27 LNG carriers and has moved more than 10 million tonnes of Russian LNG across 144 voyages since early 2025, according to FT/Kpler tracking data (Dedomeno/FT, Interfax).

Athens says a ban on EU operators would simply hand the business to non-European carriers while Russian exports continue (ProtoThema/Reuters). These are specialised Arctic ice-class vessels, not ordinary tankers that can be redeployed overnight. If they are pushed out of Russian service, their owners could sell them to non-Western operators, leaving Europe with the loss and Russia with another route around the rules.

The counter-case is just as practical. As long as EU-regulated carriers are available, Russia's shipping costs stay lower. Push those cargoes onto a shadow fleet, meaning older vessels with opaque ownership, loose registration and insurance outside the Western system, and Russia pays more in freight and cover per voyage. That reduces export revenue (Maritime Executive, The Insider). The problem is that neither side has published cargo-by-cargo figures showing how much money Moscow would actually lose. The mechanism makes sense. The size of the hit is still unclear.

Every exposed firm creates a veto

Greece is the loudest objector, but it is not the only member state bargaining. Austria sought a narrow exception for Raiffeisen Bank International (RBI), whose Russian subsidiary has been hit with more than €2.3 billion in damages by Russian courts, linked to a frozen stake in construction group Strabag and the sanctioned entity Rasperia (trend). Vienna wanted that frozen stake transferred in a way that compensates RBI, written directly into the sanctions text (FAZ).

Belgium faces the same pressure on a much larger scale. Euroclear, the Brussels-based financial depository, which settles cross-border securities transactions, holds roughly €190 billion of frozen Russian central-bank assets (Meduza, EJIL:Talk!). The EU sends the profits from those assets to Ukraine, but has not confiscated the principal. Brussels accepts that arrangement, while resisting anything further without a legal shield, especially as Moscow courts keep issuing politically driven judgments against Euroclear that may be unenforceable but still create risk.

The same pattern runs through all three cases. Sanctions place real financial risk inside specific European firms. Unanimity then gives those firms' governments a negotiating position. Malta has lived with this logic in other EU files, from tax to financial services to gaming regulation: the European rule is collective, but the domestic exposure is highly specific.

The asking price rises

Poland and the Baltic states see this as corrosion. Each round becomes easier to dilute, because every exemption teaches the next exposed sector how to lobby its government before the next vote (Business Insider Polska). Sanctions work as a stack: oil price caps, transport bans, insurance restrictions, SWIFT cutoffs and asset freezes reinforce each other (Commission FAQ). Loosen one layer, and the others become easier to route around.

The 21st package may still pass on 23 July. But four years into the war, every round makes the cost of unanimity harder to hide. Governments are not blocking sanctions because they support Russia. They are extracting protection for the private losses sanctions create inside their own borders. The ambition is European. The bill lands company by company.