Brussels, 15/12/2011 (Agence Europe) - On Thursday 15 December, the Russian president, Dmitri Medvedev, announced that Russia was ready to help the European Union financially, in addition to its commitments to the International Monetary Fund. “We shall provide the EU with assistance. We have a quota in the International Monetary Fund and correspondingly we shall honour all our obligations as an IMF member. (…) We are ready to consider other measures of support”, he told Herman Van Rompuy and José Manuel Barroso during the press conference after the EU/Russia summit. He said that only Europe can help itself but that the other countries must create the conditions so that it can overcome the crisis as soon as possible.
“We are ready to invest the required funds to support the European economy and the eurozone”, Medvedev explained with reference to its IMF contribution. This, he explained, is in the interest of the EU and of the Russian Federation, which holds 41% of its reserves in euro.
Although no sum was announced publicly, the special adviser to the Russian head of state for economic issues, Arkadi Dvorkovich, told AFP before the summit that Medvedev planned to pledge Russian support of up to $20 billion. He confirmed that Russia is ready to release a first “minimum contribution” of $10 billion. In order to do so, the eurozone must make headway with its initial objective of reaching financial firepower of €1,000 billion for its bailout fund. The final decision depends, he said, on what the IMF does in favour of the eurozone and on the size of the gap to be made up between the objective of €1,000 billion and the amount that can effectively be made available, Dvorkovich explained.
The Russian president also pointed out that his country is very keen for the European Union to remain a powerful political and economic force. The EU is Moscow's leading trading partner and Russia is the EU's third largest. This year, according to Medvedev, the value of EU/Russia trade will be $400 billion. (CG/transl.jl)