EastMed After the Pipeline
The EastMed pipeline proposal is effectively shelved. What survives — Cyprus interconnector electricity, LNG cargo routes, and the EastMed Gas Forum — is the working architecture.
What was proposed
The EastMed pipeline, advanced 2018–2022, was a proposed 1,900-kilometre subsea pipeline from Eastern Mediterranean gas fields through Cyprus and Greece into Italy. It was always a politically structured project — backed by Israel, Cyprus, and Greece, US-supported until 2022, opposed by Türkiye, and economically debatable on a stand-alone basis.
What ended it
The 2022 US State Department non-paper questioning project economics effectively closed the federal-backing window. European energy policy shifted toward LNG and renewables; the pipeline's decades-long payback case became harder to underwrite as a fossil-fuel commitment in the European context.
What survives
Three pieces. First, the EuroAsia Interconnector — a high-voltage DC submarine cable connecting Israel, Cyprus, and Greece — is funded, partially built, and operationally meaningful (electricity, not gas). Second, LNG cargoes out of Egyptian Idku and Damietta plants now do what the EastMed pipeline would have done: deliver Israeli-origin gas into European markets in molecule form. Third, the EastMed Gas Forum remains the multilateral framework for regional coordination on production, infrastructure, and dispute management.
What to watch in 2026
The Cyprus–Israel electricity interconnection commissioning timetable; LNG re-export volumes from the Egyptian trains; any reanimation of pipeline discussion as a Türkiye-routed alternative; the EastMed Gas Forum's expansion membership track. The pipeline is dead. The corridor it was meant to serve is not.