Austria

When the 21st sanctions package failed at COREPER on 15 July 2026, Vienna's condition was specific: delist Rasperia, a company tied to Oleg Deripaska, so its frozen assets could repay Raiffeisen Bank. Because sanctions need unanimity, that single demand stalled the text.

Austria was one of six states still holding conditions before the vote set for 22 July, and none of those conditions concerned oil. The package cleared on 23 July after three attempts, freezing the Russian oil price cap at $44 for 12 months, listing 250 entities and barring 32 Russian banks. For Austria, the episode showed how the exposure of one large bank to Russia can shape the country's vote on EU foreign policy.

The EU's ban on short-term Russian pipeline contracts bound on 17 June 2026. Around 5 billion cubic metres a year of supply to Hungary, Slovakia and Austria lapsed on that date, and no court had agreed to pause the ban nine days before it took effect.

Austria's position differs from its eastern neighbours. Hungary's long-term deal via TurkStream stays exempt until at least September 2027, and Slovakia now challenges the ban alone at the Court of Justice in Luxembourg. Austria has neither a long-term exemption nor a pending court case, so any volumes it lost on 17 June have to be replaced through the market.

The Central European Gas Hub in Vienna had traded more than €2 per megawatt-hour above the Dutch TTF benchmark through May 2026, a premium ACER documented. By 11 June that gap had shrunk to €0.41, because long-term TurkStream contracts left only a thin slice of short-term volume exposed to the coming ban.

On 17 June, the first day of the ban, the Austrian hub paid €1.62 over TTF, four times the pre-ban gap, as traders priced one day of supply doubt at the Kipi crossing between Greece and Turkey. By 18 June the premium had fallen back towards flat.