EU against opening accounts in rubles for gas payments.
The European Commission says opening ruble accounts at a Russian bank to make gas payments violates bloc sanctions against Moscow as Brussels publishes new guidelines on how companies can legally continue to buy Russian fuel.
States and companies have been demanding clarity for weeks on how they can continue to buy Russian energy, as Moscow in late March demanded that foreign buyers make payments in rubles for Russian gas or risk being cut off from supplies.
In the updated guide that the EU has recently published, the European Commission confirmed the earlier advice that EU sanctions do not prevent companies from opening accounts in Russian banks.
It said companies could pay for Russian gas as long as they made the payments in the currency set out in existing contracts.
Almost all supply contracts that EU companies have with Russian gas giant Gazprom are in euros or dollars.
But a European Commission spokesman said on Tuesday that opening ruble accounts with Russian bank Gazprombank would be a violation of the European bloc’s sanctions regime.
“This goes beyond the indications we have given to member states what they can do under the sanctions regime,” the spokesman told reporters.
President Vladimir Putin’s decree says transactions can only be carried out after foreign currencies have been exchanged for rubles and companies must open two accounts with the Russian bank, one in foreign currency and the other in rubles.
Russia cut off gas supplies to Bulgaria and Poland last month after the two countries refused to pay for gas in rubles.