The eight countries that were signatories on a letter calling on the European Commission to impose further tariffs on Russian and Belarusian imports (see EUROPE 13521/4) tried to win other countries over to their cause during the ‘Trade’ Council on Thursday, 21 November. “If we look at last year, the trade between [the] EU and Russia was at 43 billion euros. So, [there is] still a lot of trade going on, and we have to [tax] it as much as we can so we can hurt Russia’s economy”, felt Swedish Minister for [International Development Cooperation and Foreign] Trade Benjamin Dousa when he arrived in Brussels. Sweden spearheaded the proposal to subject more Russian and Belarusian products to tariffs.
According to all the countries that support this initiative, the European Commission needs to make a proposal along these lines as soon as possible. Ignacy Niemczycki, Poland’s deputy minister for economic development, indicated that this could be before or during the Polish Presidency of the Council of the EU.
European Commissioner for Trade Valdis Dombrovskis, for his part, indicated that the European Commission was working on a proposal on the possibility of targeting more Russian and Belarusian agricultural products—potentially fertilisers.
For Lithuania—which is also in favour of further tariffs—certain Member States’ reluctance could be overcome by initially targeting the products on which there is the most consensus. According to Lithuanian Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs Simonas Šatūnas, fertilisers are by far the obvious choice. “We have [European] fertiliser producers that are asking us to take the measures. So, we need to take the measures”, he insisted.
Nevertheless, several Member States are calling for an impact assessment before taking a position on further tariffs. This is notably the case for Austria and even Greece. According to Austrian Minister for Labour and the Economy Martin Kocher, the next sanctions package—which the European Commission will be proposing in the near future—would be a more appropriate framework than trade policy.
This is a “quite dangerous” idea according to Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó, who is taking into consideration the fact that the tariffs’ impact on the European economy has not been assessed. “We believe that it is a way of circumventing the unanimity rule that governs sanctions policy”, he affirmed. (Original version in French by Léa Marchal)