The European Commission (EC) is considering “a lot” including sanctions on imports of oil from Russia in its next package of measures against the Slavic giant, Vice President and Trade Commissioner of the 27 Valdis Dombrovskis revealed on Friday.
Dombrovskis, who is in Washington this week to attend the spring meeting of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB), said in a roundtable discussion with journalists that Russia's “some kind of oil embargo” is one of six new sanctions that the Commission is working on.
“We must impose sanctions in a way that maximizes pressure on Russia while minimizing collateral damage for us,” said the Trade Commissioner, one of the eight vice-presidents of the European governing body.
Although Dombrovskis did not necessarily rule out an embargo on Russian oil, he clarified that there are other avenues for imposing “smart” sanctions, such as applying tariffs.
Beyond the immediate future, the Commissioner recalled that the European Union (EU) has decided to abandon Russia's energy dependence in the medium and long term.
In early April, the EU announced that it will ban since August the import of Russian coal, which represents only a small part of an energy business dominated by oil and natural gas, more lucrative for the Kremlin and difficult for the EU to sanction.
Since the start of the war in Ukraine, the EU spends 1 billion euros a day buying energy from Moscow, a fact that has been harshly criticized by the Ukrainian authorities as they consider it to be the waterline of the Russian economy.
At Friday's roundtable, Dombrovskis also indicated that another issue the EC is working on is exploring ways to give Ukraine preferential trade treatment to alleviate the gigantic impact that Russia's invasion is having on its economy.
Ukrainian President Volodymir Zelensky called on the European Union Wednesday to adopt an embargo on Russian oil and gas in the following sanctions, noting that if the bloc does not take this step, the response to Moscow “will not be tough enough”.
“We want the sixth package of sanctions to be powerful and we call for a total embargo on Russian energy, including oil and gas imports,” he said at a press conference with European Council President Charles Michel, who visited the country by surprise to meet with Zelensky in the midst of the escalation of the conflict. in the east of the country.
In the opinion of the president, the EU has room to “finalize” aspects of the sanctions and has warned that if they do not affect Russian oil and gas, the sanctions “will not be tough enough”. “We have to do everything we can to deprive Russia of the ability to finance the war,” he said.
It also called for European sanctions to tighten the siege against the Russian banking system and disconnect more entities from the SWIFT transfer system.
(With information from EFE, Europa Press, AFP and Bloomberg)
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