Greece and Malta stall EU move to bar shipping services tied to Russian oil

Two southern EU governments have emerged as the main holdouts to a plan that would curb purchases of Russian crude by restricting the maritime services that enable long-distance tanker voyages. The disagreement became clear during an EU ambassadors’ meeting on the latest sanctions package, where Athens and Valletta flagged legal uncertainties, practical enforcement problems and the economic exposure of their national shipping sectors. The proposed shift would move pressure off directly setting market prices and toward choking logistical support — denying insurance, port calls, registry services or other commercial functions to vessels handling certain Russian cargoes. At the same time, a coalition of European capitals has intensified warnings to shipowners, insurers and port operators that continued facilitation of suspected sanctioned shipments could prompt penalties, closer inspections or outright denial of services. Translating those warnings into disruptive action, however, depends on consistent, real-time intelligence, cross-border coordination and willingness to accept friction for legitimate trade. Enforcement is complicated by ship-to-ship transfers at sea, falsified manifests, opaque ownership structures and some maritime hubs whose legal frameworks make unilateral restrictions harder to apply. Market indicators to watch include spikes in insurance premiums, waves of vessel reflagging, port denial statistics and changes in vessel availability — any of which would signal tightening operational constraints. Politically, coastal economies with large merchant fleets face concentrated costs, prompting calls for exemptions, phased implementation or compensation to avoid severe domestic fallout. If enforcement is uneven, flows could be rerouted through permissive third countries or obscure intermediaries, blunting pressure on Moscow and encouraging regulatory arbitrage. Conversely, reputational and regulatory risk could push private firms to adopt stricter compliance even absent new EU law, shrinking the pool of intermediaries that make evasion feasible. The immediate effect of the dispute is a pause and a narrower negotiating window; the medium-term outcome will determine whether the bloc secures an enforceable regime that inflicts operational pain on circumvention networks or ends up with a diluted measure that leaves key loopholes intact.