In the European Union, internal resistance to the imposition of new economic sanctions against Russia is growing. More and more member states are demanding exemptions from the sanctions. This is what the Financial Times writes, citing five EU diplomats involved in the negotiations, Focus reports.
According to diplomats, fewer and fewer governments are willing to agree to decisions that could harm companies in their countries.
"At the negotiating table, the moral imperative is becoming less and less important“, one of the sources of the publication states. He adds that while European governments still maintain tough rhetoric and talk about solidarity, in practice these statements are often not backed up by concrete decisions.
The biggest disputes have arisen around a number of sectoral restrictions. In particular, Greece refuses to support the entire package of sanctions if it does not include an exception for the transport of Russian liquefied natural gas to third countries. According to FT data, the shipping company "Dynagas“ of Greek businessman Georgios Prokopio, which has transported over 30 million tons of Russian liquefied natural gas since the start of the full-scale war, would suffer the most from a possible ban.
At the same time, Germany and Portugal are insisting on removing the ban on the purchase of Russian fish from the sanctions proposal, motivating this with the need to support their own fish processing industry. France and Italy, for their part, are seeking to soften the proposal to ban the issuance of visas to the EU for Russian military personnel who participated in the war against Ukraine. Austria, meanwhile, is again pushing for the unfreezing of around €2 billion in Russian assets as compensation for losses to Raiffeisen Bank.
As diplomats say, the scale of requests for exemptions has become unprecedented.
"This is a major crisis for the entire approach to sanctions. If everyone demands exemptions and loopholes, then at the end of the process each package of sanctions will simply be an empty box", one of the diplomats said.
FOCUS recalls that Bulgaria also opposed the 21st package of sanctions if the names of Russian Patriarch Kirill and the founder of the Russian oil company "Lukoil" Vagit Alekperov are not excluded from it. It later became clear that the Russian Patriarch and Vagit Alekperov were excluded from the latest EU sanctions package against Russia.