EU Plans to Delay Methane Rules After Macron Pushback

The European Commission plans to propose postponing the entry into force of the European Union's methane regulation, a spokesperson said on Monday, after governments including France and the United States called for the policy to be paused or rolled back. The rules, which would force foreign oil and gas suppliers to monitor and report their methane emissions, are due to take effect on January 1, 2027.

The planned delay is a setback for one of the EU's flagship climate laws. Methane is the second-biggest cause of climate change after carbon dioxide, and the regulation was meant to be the first of its kind in the world, extending emissions monitoring requirements beyond the EU's borders to the countries that supply its fuel.

Pressure to delay has been building for weeks. French President Emmanuel Macron wrote to the Commission this month asking to push the start of the rules back to 2028, and roughly a dozen other EU countries, as well as the US, Europe's biggest supplier of liquefied natural gas, had asked earlier this year for the rules to be paused or reviewed, according to Reuters.

Why Brussels is hitting pause

EU Energy Commissioner Dan Jørgensen told reporters at a meeting of EU energy ministers in Dublin on Monday that he had instructed his staff to examine ways of postponing the parts of the law that apply to imports. He said a delay would run about a year, and that Brussels wanted to postpone the rules rather than water down their environmental ambition.

Jørgensen added a condition: member states would have to use the extra time to make sure they are fully prepared to enforce the law once the delay expires.

Energy anxiety is driving the move. The war in Iran has disrupted global oil and gas supplies, and European governments worry that threatening suppliers with penalties could scare fuel shipments away from Europe this winter. A Commission spokesperson confirmed the plan to propose a postponement of the regulation's entry into force but did not say how long it would last. Jørgensen had told Bloomberg News in an interview the previous week that Brussels was exploring a one-year delay for the import rules.

Macron's letter to the Commission, sent on September 18, argued the rules could create legal risks for fuel importers at a moment when supplies are tight. The Commission had initially said it would only consider extra measures if risks to security of supply emerged, according to a statement from the Commission's energy spokesperson Anna-Kaisa Itkonen.

The oil and gas industry wants to go further than governments, calling for a three-year delay in the regulation. The Commission had already moved in July to recommend that member states impose no penalties for non-compliance with the rules from 2027 to 2029.

What the methane rules actually require

The EU methane regulation, adopted in 2024, forces importers of oil, gas and coal to show that the fossil fuels they bring into the bloc were produced under monitoring, reporting and verification standards equivalent to the EU's own. The obligation was scheduled to apply to contracts concluded or renewed from August 4, 2024, with full application of the import requirements from January 1, 2027.

Its purpose is to cut methane emissions both inside the EU and across its external supply chains. The law sits alongside domestic rules requiring leak detection and repair and limits on venting and flaring, which is when methane is released or burned off during extraction.

Governments pushing for the delay say the timeline is unworkable. Importers, they argue, would struggle to document that fuels bought on global spot markets meet European standards, and suppliers with limited options could simply sell elsewhere. Macron's letter framed the request as a matter of energy security rather than opposition to climate policy, the Romanian outlet Informat reported.

Why methane matters for the climate

Methane is a potent greenhouse gas. According to the UN Environment Programme, methane released into the atmosphere is more than eighty times more potent than carbon dioxide over a twenty-year period, and it has accounted for roughly 30 per cent of global warming since pre-industrial times. Because it breaks down in about a decade, cutting methane is the fastest lever available for slowing warming in the near term.

The fossil fuel sector produces about a third of human-caused methane emissions and offers the cheapest reductions, since captured gas can be sold rather than wasted, UNEP says. More than one hundred and fifty countries have pledged to cut methane emissions by nearly a third by 2030 under the Global Methane Pledge, which the EU and the US launched in 2021.

That is why climate groups are likely to treat a delay as a serious blow. Europe's methane rules were meant to lead by example at the UN climate talks, and a postponement for imports effectively shields the supply chains that account for most of the EU's fossil fuel consumption.

What happens next

Jørgensen is expected to present the delay proposal at an EU leaders' meeting on October 15. Speaking at the same Dublin meeting, International Energy Agency head Fatih Birol said IEA member states may discuss whether to release more strategic oil reserves if market conditions require it, a sign of how seriously governments are taking this winter's supply picture.

The Commission has stressed it would not use emergency legislative powers unless a genuine energy supply emergency arises, and said technical-level discussions are already underway. For now, the January 2027 deadline stands.

Sources: Reuters, September 29, 2026; Reuters, September 28, 2026; UN Environment Programme.