On Friday 5 May, Member States received the European Commission’s proposals for the 11th sanctions package, which focuses on combating the circumvention of previously adopted sanctions against Russia.
Ambassadors from EU Member States are expected to discuss the issue on Wednesday 10 May and return to it on Friday 12.
“This package focuses on the implementation of sanctions, their effectiveness and how to prevent them from being circumvented and to avoid goods banned from export to Russia finding their way to Russia and the Russian military-industrial complex” summarised Commission spokesman Eric Mamer on Monday 8 May.
According to the Lithuanian ambassador to the EU, Arnoldas Pranckevičius, who spoke to LRT Radijas, “a lot of attention is being paid to third countries, transit countries, greater restrictions on that transit, especially dual-use or sensitive technology products”. According to him, Russia obtains some of the products it needs on the battlefield, such as sensitive technology or chips, via other countries, often in Central Asia or the South Caucasus. “We do not know where these goods end up and whether they end up in Russia. And this is probably the biggest problem”, he added.
According to a diplomat, the package contains measures against Chinese, Kazakh and Turkish entities that are allegedly involved in circumventing the sanctions.
A source told EUROPE that the package contains enhanced reporting in the event of circumvention of measures, and a mechanism for the Commission to analyse certain trade flows of products deemed sensitive to third countries. If Member States consider that the flows indicate that the country would be involved in circumventing the sanctions, they could decide, after attempting a bilateral dialogue, to restrict exports of the goods concerned to that third state.
The source added that the 11th package also extends restrictions on exports of sensitive goods, additional transport restrictions, imports to the EU and exports to Russia. It also includes new designations, including in the media world.
According to the Lithuanian ambassador to the EU, the new sanctions package should also strengthen measures against Belarus. Lithuania would like to unify the sanctions between Russia and Belarus, considering in particular that the latter is one of the countries through which the circumvention of sanctions is significant. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)