EU to give member states power to block Russian gas imports

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The EU is set to give member states powers to end gas imports from Russia and Belarus nearly two years after Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Any member state will be able to ban companies from Russia and Belarus from buying capacity in its gas pipelines and liquefied natural gas terminals, according to a draft legal text proposed by Brussels and seen by the Financial Times.

The proposal could provide a basis for EU energy companies to get out of contracts with Russian gas providers without having to pay hefty compensation, according to a senior official of the bloc.

While the 27-member bloc has gradually reduced its dependency on Russian energy following the February 2022 invasion, it still gets about a tenth of its gas supply, including LNG shipments, from the country. Several member states including Austria and Hungary still rely heavily on Russian supplies. Read the full story.

Here’s what I’m keeping tabs on today and over the weekend:

• Markets closed: Countries including Italy, Spain, Portugal and Switzerland celebrate the Immaculate Conception public holiday today.

• Economic data: Germany and Russia release November inflation data.

• Results: UK property developer Berkeley Group reports.

• TUC Special Congress: Union management will meet in London tomorrow to discuss its campaign against the UK government’s proposed strike laws.

• Egypt: The country holds its presidential election on Sunday.

• Nobel Prizes: The awards ceremony will be held in Stockholm, Sweden, on Sunday.

How well did you keep up with the news this week? Take our quiz.

Five more top stories

1. UK Labour’s shadow City minister has unveiled 10 advisers from the Square Mile, insisting her party has long stopped “sneering at business”. Tulip Siddiq told the Financial Times that Labour had worked over the past two years to eradicate memories of Jeremy Corbyn’s leftwing leadership and to embrace the City. Here are the advisers, who include the chairs of the largest banking and insurance groups.

2. Saudi Arabia shelved plans for Mohammed bin Salman to visit London in recent days, shortly before the crown prince hosted Vladimir Putin in Riyadh, according to UK officials. British and Saudi officials had been in discussions about a visit for months. Senior Conservative MPs said the postponement and Putin’s trip raised questions about the strength of the UK’s relationship with Saudi Arabia.

3. The UK’s biggest mobile phone operators could face damages of £3.3bn following class-action claims that they allegedly charged 5mn existing customers “loyalty penalties” over a 16-year period. Claimant lawyers say they filed court documents against Vodafone, EE, Three UK and O2 last week. If successful, a subscriber who held a contract with one of the operators could receive up to £1,823.

4. The UK’s public spending watchdog has rebuked the country’s top financial regulator for being too slow to act on regulatory risks and failing to give the government the information it needs as it juggles issues such as Brexit and cryptocurrency. The National Audit Office acknowledged that the Financial Conduct Authority, which oversees 50,000 companies across the UK, had made improvements under a three-year-old transformation programme but said weaknesses remained.

5. An ancient Roman statue once prized by Adolf Hitler as the embodiment of the ideal Aryan man has emerged at the centre of an unlikely spat between Italy and Germany. The fracas began when Italy’s culture minister declared on state television that the “Discobolus”, a statue of a discus thrower, would only return to Germany “over my dead body”. But in fact, Berlin had not requested the return of the statue. Read more about the controversy.

After expanding our ranking of Africa’s fastest-growing companies this year, the FT is seeking entries for the third annual list, to be published in early June 2024. Apply here to be considered.

News in-depth

Under the cover of an Israel-Hamas truce, a convoy of vehicles last week mounted one of the most unusual missions of the war: the retrieval of about 180mn shekels in cash. The stash of notes, weighing close to a tonne and worth about $50mn, was kept in two Bank of Palestine branches based in the devastated north of Gaza. Worried about a cash shortage in the south, bank officials saw the truce as a chance to retrieve the stranded money — and help stave off the collapse of the economy.

We’re also reading . . . 

• Danone’s Chechen takeover: When a warlord’s nephew seized control of the French dairy group’s Russian operations in the summer, there was fear among staff of the company’s fate. But so far Danone’s new bosses are “running it basically as an MBA case”, said one person familiar with the operations.

• Rising wages: Scrooge-like central bankers view wage increases for most people as a cause for concern, but how worrying is this really? Soumaya Keynes investigates.

• The American dream: New research shows that while Americans recognise their country’s problem with inequality, they have less desire for something to be done about it than their counterparts elsewhere in the west, writes John Burn-Murdoch. Could this mean the American dream fosters inequality?

Chart of the day

The collapse in the Argentine peso’s value has fuelled inflation to among the highest in the world. JPMorgan expects the country’s annual inflation to reach 210 per cent by the end of this year and warns that it is likely to rise further in the first half of next year — which could put it on a par with levels in Sudan and Zimbabwe.

Take a break from the news

Succession, The Bear and Fleishman is in Trouble — here is a look back at some of the best TV shows of 2023, which was also an impressive year for wrenching documentaries.

Additional contributions from Benjamin Wilhelm