The Daily View: Europe’s stalling sanctions
THE steady passing of shadow fleet, fake-flagged, or entirely flagless tankers flowing through EU waters is being met with the fearsome defence of bureaucrats with clipboards.
Governments are “challenging” the shadow fleet to produce insurance certificates — and it seems the shadow fleet are more than happy to produce them.
Whether they are suspicious, fraudulent or hastily drawn in crayon is a secondary issue; the fact is more than 90% of those challenged are stumping up a response, according to the numbers we have been shown.
What those governments are doing with that information is not entirely clear, but we do know that some of the tankers are later turning up on sanctions lists.
The only solid example given to us by the UK government promptly changed its name, its flag — and then carried on sailing exactly the same route, presumably prompting the same questions about its insurance each time it passes by the European states that continue to “challenge” it.
Meanwhile, the list of sanctioned ships is growing, with little to show for it. There are now approximately 1,500 vessels subject to some form of EU/G7 sanction, but these vessels cannot be scrapped because the scrappers cannot pay the scrap purchase price for a sanctioned vessel or to a sanctioned party. And so they carry on sailing, “challenged”, but not stopped.
In Brussels, embattled officials within the commission want to lower the oil price cap as the next step in their tightening of the screws on Moscow.
Internal opposition from the maritime awkward squad and apathy from the US have so far stymied their ambitions, so the latest wheeze appears to be a floating oil price cap, further complicating an already flawed policy.
The likelihood of that plan working — realistically — rests on what happens next in Washington, not Brussels. Specifically, it is a question of Donald Trump’s appetite to take on Vladimir Putin and start sanctioning Russia again.
Proposals to hit anyone buying Russian crude (China and India) with a 500% tariff are still far from becoming a realistic policy, but the bipartisan Sanctioning Russia Act of 2025 is gaining traction.
Making predictions on what the US president might — or might not — say is, at best, a capricious endeavour. But the oil traders at least appear braced for fresh US efforts to crimp Russian energy exports.
West Texas Intermediate advanced more than 2% to top $68 a barrel after Trump said he planned to make a “major statement” on Russia on Monday and reiterated criticism of Putin.
For now, though, Lloyd’s List is tracking multiple sanctioned ships, with entirely imaginary flags, routinely sailing past the government “challenges” — and, until surveillance evolves into enforcement, that seems unlikely to change.
Richard Meade
Editor-in-chief, Lloyd’s List
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