The European Union has taken a major step toward ending imports of Russian and Belarusian nitrogen fertilizers, approving phased duties designed to make purchases economically unviable within three years.
In a vote in the European parliament in Brussels on May 22, EU lawmakers voted 411-100 in favor of introducing the import duties from 1 July as the bloc tries to ratchet up pressure on Moscow to bring an end to the war in Ukraine sparked by its full-scale invasion more than three years ago.
"Today, we take further steps to target the Russian war economy," Lubica Karvasova, an MEP from the Progressive Slovakia party, said after the vote.
"Russia refuses to engage in cease-fire negotiations with Ukraine. Russia doesn’t want peace; on the contrary, it has deliberately weaponized our dependencies. Not anymore," she added. "As Europe moves decisively away from Russian fossil fuels, time has come to do the same with fertilizers, which are only gas imports in another form."
The move by the 27-nation bloc comes after a week of intense diplomacy centered around the first direct peace talks between Kyiv and Moscow in three years and a long phone call between US President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin.
While just holding talks were a step forward, the main objective set out by Ukraine and the West, a 30-day cease-fire, was not achieved, prompting the EU to approve a 17th package of sanctions against Moscow on May 20.
The duties approved on May 22 will see the current 6.5 percent tariff levied on fertilizers from the two countries remain in place.
But additional duties of 40 euros to 45 euros ($45-50) per metric ton will be enforced until mid-2026, when they will rise to 60 euros ($68) per ton, then to 80 euros ($90) per ton in 2027.
They will then make a massive jump to 350 euro ($395) and 430 euro ($486) per ton by 2028, essentially making it prohibitively expensive to buy the products from Belarus and Russia.
EU countries imported 4.4 million tons of fertilizer from Russia and Belarus last year -- about 30 percent of total EU fertilizer imports -- up from 3.6 million tons in 2023.
The increase has raised concerns about growing European dependence on Russian products, which remain attractive due to their low price as Moscow scrambles to find foreign buyers amid waves of sanctions over the war.
The May 22 European Parliament session also increased EU tariffs by 50 percent on the value of Russian and Belarusian agricultural products such as sugar, vinegar, flour, and animal feed.
The Kremlin reacted to the news by saying the measures would hurt EU members more than Russia.
"I think that markets in other areas will compensate for the European duties, but the Europeans will continue, as always, to shoot themselves in the foot," spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists in Moscow during a daily briefing.
The bloc had previously been reluctant to hit Russian agricultural products with sanctions given accusations from poorer countries in Asia and Africa that such moves cause food shortages.
The situation has been somewhat alleviated over the past year with Ukraine resuming exports of its food produce via the Black Sea.
The European Union has also pledged that the transit of Russian and Belarusian agricultural exports through the bloc to the rest of the world is still possible.
The EU is also hoping that the measures will mean a diversification of supplies with increased imports from countries like Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, and Oman, places Brussels is keen to forge closer relationships with.
The United States has also said it wants to increase fertilizer exports with President Donald Trump suspending April tariffs on fertilizers for the EU.
