German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said, on Monday 13 July, that the ground had to be prepared to resume strategic discussions between the European Union and Russia.
“More needs to be done if strategic relations with Russia are to be relaunched”, he told the European Parliament Committee on Foreign Affairs.
Mr Maas recalled, however, that the sine qua non for the resumption of such relations was a solution in Eastern Ukraine. Acknowledging that the implementation of the Minsk agreements and the latest decisions taken at the summit on 10 December (see EUROPE 12387/22) was “dragging on enormously”, the minister explained that, for the Russians, the condition for moving forward was a change in strategic relations between the EU and Russia.
“They want to start off on a new foot. But for us, it is a bit the opposite, the solution to the conflict is a prerequisite for the revival of our strategic relations”, he said.
The minister acknowledged that Central and Eastern European Member States may perceive the threat differently. His colleague, the Minister of Defence Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, will be in Warsaw on Wednesday 15 July to meet with her Polish counterpart, Mariusz Błaszczak. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)