Hungary’s Foreign Minister, Péter Szijjártó, contradicted, on Saturday 26 August, the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs Josep Borrell’s assertion that European sanctions against Russia are effective.
In a speech at the Tranzit political festival, the minister said that the sanctions policy had failed and that it had harmed Europe.
“We didn’t bring the Russians to their knees, that’s clear. The Russian economy may not be in its most brilliant year or period, but to say that it has been brought to its knees would be a baroque and poetic exaggeration”, he explained.
“We adopted a number of sanctions packages after it became clear that they were not going to work“, added Mr Szijjártó, saying that “everywhere in the world, the European sanctions policy is being laughed at”.
In his view, Europeans are being drawn into a “spiral of sanctions”. Sanctions that are “extremely dangerous, and unfortunately it is not completely unrealistic that they could be fatal for the European economy”, warned Mr Szijjártó. “We are destroying European economies with sanctions. Sanctions are bad for all European companies”, stressed the minister.
In an article published on his blog the same day, Mr Borrell said that “sanctions against Russia are working”. “Some claim these sanctions have not worked. This is simply not true. Within a year, they have already limited Moscow’s options considerably causing financial strain, cutting the country from key markets and significantly degrading Russia’s industrial and technological capacity”, summarised the High Representative. He added: “To stop the war, we need to stay the course”.
According to Mr Borrell, the Russian economy has contracted by 2.1% in 2022, and according to the latest OECD report, Russian GDP is set to shrink by up to 2.5% in 2023. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)