On Thursday 15 September, the Council, using the written procedure, prolonged EU restrictive measures by six months against 146 persons and 37 entities violating or threatening Ukraine’s territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence, whether in Crimea or in the east of the country.
On 7 September, the ambassadors of the 28 member states confirmed the Council’s intention to extend sanctions (see EUROPE 11618). These sanctions, introduced in March 2014 and extended several times since, will now continue until 15 March 2017. The legal acts “are available in the EU Official Journal of 16 September 2016”, the Council states in its press release.
In addition to these sanctions, the EU has put in place economic sanctions targeting specific sectors of the Russian economy, running until 31 January 2017, and restrictive measures in response to the illegal annexation of Crimea and Sevastopol, and limited to these areas, which will remain in place until 23 June 2017.
Elsewhere, the foreign ministers of France, Jean-Marc Ayrault, and Germany, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, accompanied by their Ukrainian counterpart Pavlo Klimkin, travelled to eastern Ukraine on Thursday 15 September, after a fresh ceasefire came into effect at midnight on Wednesday 14. Among others, Ayrault and Steinmeier met officials from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to discuss the work being done by the observation mission. This is their first visit to Eastern Ukraine since the outbreak of fighting in April 2014. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)