On Thursday 8 February, the Member States’ ambassadors to the EU (Coreper) held an initial exchange of views on the 13th package of sanctions against Russia. The day before, they had received proposals from the European Commission and the European External Action Service.
According to a European source, “the package has been well received by the Member States, even if the limited time available to analyse the proposals has not allowed us to go into much detail”. Member States had until the end of the week to send in their comments.
The aim is to adopt this package before the second anniversary of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, on 24 February 2024.
This 13th package, which is expected to be smaller than the previous one, adopted in mid-December 2023 (see EUROPE 13316/2), should sanction new lists of persons and entities and strengthen the effectiveness of measures already taken, “on the basis of ongoing lessons learned from the battlefields”, according to this source. According to Bloomberg, which has seen the proposal, around 55 entities and some sixty individuals involved in the production of weapons and the supply of technologies and electronic components used by Russian defence companies to build weapons, as well as people close to the President, Vladimir Putin, will be affected. The measures could also apply to shipping companies providing transport and logistics for the transfer of munitions from North Korea to Russia.
The Member States’ ambassadors will be discussing the package again during the week of 12 February. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)