Nord Stream 2 owner sues EU over Russian gas import ban

Nord Stream 2 AG has taken the European Union to the bloc’s General Court, filing Case T-264/26 on April 27 to challenge the new Russian gas import ban. The case, made public on June 15, seeks to annul Regulation (EU) 2026/261, the law adopted on January 26 and published on February 2 that orders a phase-out of LNG imports by December 31, 2026, and pipeline gas by September 30, 2027, with a possible extension to October 31 if storage levels fall short.

The Swiss-registered company, based in Zug and owned by Gazprom, argues the regulation amounts to a sanction-like measure and should have been adopted under Article 215 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, not under the internal-market and trade bases of Articles 194(2) and 207. It also argues that using the ordinary legislative procedure rather than unanimity makes the law invalid. Nord Stream 2 AG says the ban effectively confiscates the pipeline without compensation and amounts to de facto expropriation.

Nord Stream was built as a 1,224-kilometre Baltic Sea system designed to carry up to 110 billion cubic metres of gas a year to Germany. Nord Stream 2 was completed in 2021, but Germany halted the project just before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, and it never began operating.

Explosions on September 26, 2022, damaged both Nord Stream structures in the Danish and Swedish economic zones. Denmark and Sweden later closed their investigations and handed evidence to German authorities. Russia blamed Ukraine for the attack, while Kyiv denied involvement.

The European Commission said in May 2025 that Russian gas still made up 19 percent of EU gas imports in 2024, down from 45 percent before the 2022 shock. Eurostat put Russia’s share of extra-EU natural gas imports at 33 percent in the fourth quarter of 2021, falling to 13 percent in the fourth quarter of 2023.