Spanish Minister Pascual Navarro Ríos and European Commissioner Didier Reynders highlighted, on Tuesday 17 October, the impact of European sanctions on the Russian economy.
“The effectiveness of the sanctions is shown by the current state of the Russian economy”, explained Mr Navarro Ríos during a debate in plenary session. Mr Reynders said that the sanctions were increasingly depriving Russia of its usual sources of income. “Russia is trying to restructure its trade patterns to get around the sanctions, which shows that the sanctions are working and cutting off Russia’s access to many goods”, he added.
However, both the EU Council and Commission representatives stressed the importance of implementing the 11 sets of sanctions adopted and avoiding their circumvention.
For their part, the MEPs considered that this was not enough and that more needed to be done.
“No economic sanction against any regime has ever brought a regime to its knees”, said Bernard Guetta (Renew Europe, French), who called for an assessment of what has worked very well, somewhat and not at all. “We must call on the EC to do even more, better and faster”, he stressed.
“We need to step up the pressure, increase the sanctions, close the loopholes and have a clear strategy”, added Sergey Lagodinsky (Greens/EFA, German).
“This sanctions regime is unprecedented and important, but it is not enough, it is not being followed consistently, we need to broaden it”, said Anna Fotyga (ECR, Polish), citing measures against Russian diamonds - currently being drawn up by the G7 countries -, Rosatom and targeted sanctions.
On behalf of the EPP, Andrius Kubilius (Lithuanian) called for additional energy measures, such as lowering the crude oil price cap from 60 to 30 dollars per barrel, an embargo on Russian LNG, restrictions on fuel imports if these are produced by third countries from Russian oil, and a price cap on Russian ammonia fertiliser exports. Mr Kubilius also called for stronger, centralised control of the implementation of sanctions at EU level.
Stressing the relative effectiveness of the measures - “the fact remains that the war continues” - Włodzimierz Cimoszewicz (S&D, Polish) advocated the possibility of secondary sanctions against countries that do not cooperate with the EU’s efforts. He also called for frozen Russian funds to be used to help Ukraine.
On the other hand, for ID, Thierry Mariani (French) said that the sanctions had “multiplied bitterness”. “The EU will have succeeded in only one thing: extending the list of our enemies by worrying our friends”, he explained.
Several MEPs also called for additional measures against Belarus, a Moscow ally. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)