The category that had been left alone

Through two years of packages, liquefied natural gas had been left largely untouched. In 2024 that changed, and the shape of the measure is instructive.

What was restricted, and what was not

The measure targeted transshipment — the practice of bringing cargoes into European ports and transferring them onward to third markets. It did not ban imports for European consumption outright.

That distinction is not weakness. It is a calculation. Banning transshipment removes a service Europe was providing to a trade flow that did not end in Europe, at very little cost to European energy security. Banning imports outright would have raised prices in member states most dependent on that supply, and unanimity would not have been available.

The general principle

Coalitions maintain sanctions by finding the measures where the cost falls on the target rather than on the coalition. That is not cynicism — it is what makes a regime last three years instead of one.

A maximalist measure that fractures unanimity delivers less than a partial measure that holds.

Alongside

Further listings, tighter rules on subsidiaries of European firms operating abroad, and continued action against the shadow fleet moving oil outside the price cap arrangements.

How I would read the record

Each package reached one category further into territory that had previously been protected by cost or by objection. Energy was the hardest and it took two years to begin. It began.