Europe needs to reduce its methane emissions. There is a solid and cross-cutting consensus on this. The European gas industry has spent years improving its systems for monitoring, detecting, and reducing emissions throughout the entire value chain—from production and transport to distribution and storage—and accumulated technological advances allow this objective to be tackled with increasingly precise instruments. This progress must continue and accelerate. But precisely because of the importance of the objective, it is worth rigorously examining whether the deadlines and mechanisms currently provided for in the European Methane Emissions Regulation respond to the real conditions of implementation or, on the contrary, introduce risks that go beyond those the legislator intended to assume.
The active debate surrounding this Regulation does not question the need to reduce emissions. What is on the table is a more specific question: are certain obligations planned for 2027 applicable given the current state of methodological, regulatory, and institutional development in the sector? Importers of liquefied natural gas, gas infrastructure operators, and sectoral associations from various Member States have convergently pointed out that some of these obligations could come into force without fully developed methodologies, internationally recognized verification systems, complete implementing acts, or sufficient global certification capacity. When these conditions are not met, regulation does not disappear: it becomes a factor of legal uncertainty that penalizes investment without generating the environmental improvements that justify it.
It is worth rigorously examining whether the deadlines and mechanisms currently provided for in the European Methane Emissions Regulation respond to the real conditions of implementation
The scale of the problem is not theoretical. According to the Wood Mackenzie study EU Methane Emissions Regulation Study, 43% of European gas imports and 87% of crude oil imports made in 2025 would not meet the Regulation's requirements in 2027. These figures accurately express the mismatch between the planned obligations and the real conditions of the global hydrocarbon market. European importers have limited—sometimes non-existent—capacity to influence emission measurement and verification practices in third countries throughout the entire production chain. Forcing compliance with requirements whose execution does not depend on the obligated party is not effective regulation: it is a source of litigation and competitive distortion that penalizes precisely those operators who have invested the most in advanced emission reduction standards. The real risk is that the Regulation will displace European industrial capacity without reducing a single ton of methane on a global scale.
This warning is especially relevant in the current geopolitical context. The war in Ukraine, instability in the Middle East, and growing international competition for LNG have placed supply diversification at the core of European energy strategy. The effort made since 2022—new suppliers, new regasification terminals, new logistical routes—has made it possible to replace significant volumes of Russian gas without the crisis reaching even greater dimensions. This achievement cannot be compromised by a regulatory framework that, due to its deadlines or its conditions of application, hinders the signing of long-term supply contracts or limits access to certain origin markets.
Forcing compliance with requirements whose execution does not depend on the obligated party is not effective regulation
The European Commission itself has implicitly acknowledged this tension by formulating recommendations aimed at mitigating supply security risks. But the recommendations are not binding and cannot provide the legal certainty required for investments with ten or fifteen-year contractual horizons. What the gas sector requires is not interpretive flexibility, but regulatory predictability: to know exactly which standards must be met, who will verify compliance, with what methodologies, and under what liability regime. When these certainties do not exist, regulatory risk is incorporated into the cost of capital, financing becomes more expensive, and investment decisions are shifted to jurisdictions with more stable frameworks. At a time when the transition requires mobilizing massive amounts of capital to develop renewable gases, hydrogen networks, and underground storage, regulatory credibility is a condition for possibility, not an accessory value.
A specific adjustment to the implementation calendar —not to the objectives of the Regulation, but to the deadlines for obligations whose application conditions are not yet mature— is not equivalent to a reduction in environmental ambition. It is equivalent to ensuring that when the obligations come into force, they have all the technical, institutional, and methodological instruments necessary to produce the results intended by the legislator. Regulation that comes into force without compliance infrastructure does not generate methane emission reductions: it generates litigation, distortion of the gas market, and investor uncertainty.
In this scenario, the Government of Spain has a concrete and immediate opportunity before it. In this month of June's European Union Energy Council, Spain should actively support a resolution that recognizes the need to adjust the obligations on importers planned for 2027 and urges the Commission to present a legislative proposal that adapts these requirements to the real conditions of the global market. Spain has strong reasons to lead this position: its gas supply system, built on a wide diversification of origins and routes, is one of the most valuable strategic assets the country has and one of those that has contributed the most resilience to the entire European energy system in recent years. Defending it is not defending particular interests: it is defending an energy security model that has proven its effectiveness and that the regulatory framework under construction should not erode.
A specific adjustment to the implementation calendar does not equate to a reduction in environmental ambition
The reduction of methane emissions from the gas sector must remain a shared priority. What is being debated is not that objective, but the implementation architecture that must make it possible. Adjusting that architecture —in deadlines, in verification mechanisms, in the acts of execution applicable to gas operators and importers— is a condition for the regulation to fulfill its function: to reduce emissions effectively, sustainably, and compatibly with security of supply. Europe has the capacity to lead globally in this area. That capacity depends on the adopted regulation being technically sound, legally stable, and operationally applicable. All three attributes are necessary if the goal is for emissions reduction to occur in reality and not just on paper.