The High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Josep Borrell, and a number of EU foreign ministers reiterated, on Friday 12 May, upon their arrival at the ‘Gymnich’ Council in Stockholm, that the EU will continue to support Ukraine until it wins.
“Ministers agreed more than ever on the importance of supporting Ukraine. It is and remains our priority to give Ukraine the means to protect itself and build its resilience to beat Russia”, he told the media.
“Russia has to understand - Putin has to understand - that we will not fall. So stop waiting for us to get tired. We will not”, he warned.
In addition to immediate support - military, humanitarian and financial - Mr Borrell claimed it was necessary to be “looking in the medium term and preparing a multiannual support to Ukraine”. “Ukraine must be sure that we will support it, not just in the everyday battle in the war, but in the long haul”, he stressed. The High Representative said that there was a need to look at how to transform the instruments developed to deal with the immediate threat into a long-term commitment to support Ukraine financially, militarily and on a humanitarian level.
For the Polish Undersecretary of State, Paweł Jabłoński, the financing of the support should be through the use of funds and assets confiscated from Russia. “We have to find a way to use this money wisely”, he added, saying that it was not up to European taxpayers to pay. While the EU is still working on legal ways to use these funds, the Belgian government has announced a new aid package of support measures for Ukraine worth €92 million, from the tax revenues earned on Russian financial assets frozen in Belgium.
No impunity
The ministers also discussed the fight against impunity. On Friday, the Core Group of 37 States met in Tallinn to advance its work on the Special Tribunal and solutions for its legal parameters.
Mr Borrell argued for an internationalised tribunal. “We have to look for a solution that comes quickly. We need a solution [that is] practically implementable and ready-to-use”, he explained.
While Ukraine favours a special international tribunal for the crime of aggression, Member States are divided. France and Germany support the idea of an internationalised tribunal, while the Baltic States, the Czech Republic and Belgium would favour a special international tribunal.
“Putin and his puppets must be tried in an international court”, said the Estonian Minister Margus Tsahkna. For his Romanian counterpart, Bogdan Aurescu, whose country is a member of the Core Group, “we need to find a solution with a very solid legal basis and start as soon as possible”.
Preventing sanction circumvention
The ministers also discussed the 11th sanctions package. “We must continue to increase the pressure” on Russia, warned Swedish Foreign Minister Tobias Billström. In his view, preventing the circumvention of measures is “as important and in some cases could be as important as introducing new sanctions”.
“We want to avoid that Russia can have dual-use products that feed the war machine”, Mr Borrell explained. According to an EU official, the EU is not proposing an extraterritoriality of sanctions. “You can’t stop China from selling dual-use products to Russia that can be used for a fridge or a tank, but you can stop European firms from selling them to China”, he told a small group of journalists, including EUROPE.
While Lithuanian Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis supported the proposal for restrictive measures against third country companies that would help circumvent sanctions, he was more circumspect about measures on a whole sector of activity or a country-wide ban, questioning its effectiveness. “I'm not sure there will be unanimity (among Member States) for a country-wide ban”, he added.
The Austrian minister, Alexander Schallenberg, also supported the proposal. “This is uncharted territory for the EU. But I think it is right and important that we do so”, he explained, adding that there was a difference between not joining the sanctions and deliberately circumventing them and thus undermining the EU’s policy towards Russia.
But a decision could be a long time coming, with Hungarian minister Péter Szijjártó warning that as long as OTP, Hungary’s largest bank, remains on the Ukrainian list of international war sponsors, “the (Hungarian) government can hardly negotiate sanctions that will require further sacrifices”. Speaking to the media, Mr Borrell and Mr Billström said they had not heard this position at the meeting.
On the issue of circumventing sanctions, the ministers are aware that the international community must work to support Ukraine. “There is no doubt that more commitment is needed”, Borrell said, explaining that it was necessary to look at how to reach out more and better to those countries that voted in the UN against the Russian invasion, but which subsequently were not as strong as the EU would have liked against the invasion.
In a position paper presented by the High Representative on EU-China relations (see separate news item), Mr Borrell stresses that “China-EU relations will be seriously affected, if China does not push Russia to withdraw from Ukraine”. “Russia has obviously managed to make us look like imperialists, colonialists. This should make us reflect on the fact that our soft power, our presence, is clearly much weaker than we thought”, added Mr Schallenberg.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba will be in Stockholm on Saturday 13 May for discussions with his European counterparts, but also with the EU partners present at the Indo-Pacific Forum. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)