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Eastern Europeans push for new penalties as EU
sanctions fail to end Putin’s war
Brussels is planning compliance measures to ensure
existing sanctions hold firm. But that’s not enough for Poland and the Baltics.
BY BARBARA
MOENS
April 1,
2022 6:40 pm
Poland and
the Baltic countries are proposing new punitive measures against the Russian
economy, arguing that initial rounds of EU sanctions have failed in their
stated goal of ending President Vladimir Putin's ability to wage war.
In the days
after the invasion, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen promised
to “cripple Putin’s ability to finance his war machine” and to ruin Russia’s
economy. But frustration is running high that the Russian leader is still
keeping his head well above water financially; Europe still pays Russia
hundreds of millions of euros a day for energy, and the ruble has bounced back
to pre-war levels.
“Some EU
leaders are treating the sanctions as a smokescreen for their inaction,” Polish
Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki tweeted today. “The sanctions are supposed to
bring Ukraine peace, not to appease Europe’s guilty conscience.”
The Central
and Eastern Europeans are at odds with their Western European counterparts over
how hard to turn the screws now. Poland is proposing a prohibitively high
tariff on Russian fuels, while Estonia is suggesting a special escrow account
that will hold some of the payments for Russian energy until Russian forces
withdraw from Ukraine.
The Western
Europeans, by contrast, want to avoid such drastic steps and officials in
Brussels are now preparing compliance measures to enforce existing penalties.
European leaders last week agreed only to focus on implementation of the
current sanctions and closing loopholes in them. “All our efforts should be on
enforcing these sanctions and preventing circumvention and evasion,” von der
Leyen said last week.
As far as
Poland and the Baltic nations see it, it is a mistake not to ramp up the
pressure now. They point to the worsening humanitarian situation in Ukraine and
to demands from the Ukrainian government itself. “Russia keeps bombing
Ukrainian cities and murdering civilians, therefore sanctions must further
increase,” Ukrainian Foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba told his French counterpart
this week.
“We have
taken a bit of a pause, but the feeling from our point is that the pause is
lasting too long,” said one senior EU diplomat. “We have to continue putting
pressure on the Russian regime.”
Second-best
options
Calls from
Poland and the Baltics for an all-out ban on Russian energy — or at least an
embargo on Russian oil — are being blocked by Germany and others, so they are
now scrambling for second-best options.
“Far-reaching
sanctions such as an energy ban will probably stay in the fridge for now,” the
senior diplomat said. “There is no unity to move further. But that doesn’t mean
we can’t move ahead with other things.”
This week,
Morawiecki said Poland will end all imports of Russian energy by the end of the
year. The government will move first with a ban on coal, which Poland wants to
enter into force in April or May at the latest. He called on other EU countries
to do the same. “This is our plan for the EU — to snatch this weapon from
Putin’s hands, from Russia’s hands,” Morawiecki said.
The
European Commission is currently “assessing” the announcements from the Polish
government, a Commission spokesperson said.
Poland also
called on the European Commission to introduce a tariff on Russian fossil
fuels, as Brussels has exclusive competences over the EU’s trade policy. A
Polish official said “detailed proposals on this solution are being prepared.”
“We would
like to make import of Russian fossil fuels unprofitable; this is where these
proposals are coming from. However, we’ll keep on convincing our partners to
support an embargo on Russian fossil fuels,” the official added.
Estonia is
pushing another compromise, urging Brussels to hold back part of Russia’s
energy income in a special account that Moscow could only access once Russia
had pulled back its army. Fulminating that the EU had paid Russia €22 billion
since the beginning of the war, Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas this week
wrote a letter to von der Leyen, seen by POLITICO, proposing the escrow system
after she unsuccessfully pushed for the idea in last week’s European Council
meeting with fellow heads of state and government.
Poland and
the Baltics also called on the Commission for a ban on truck traffic to and
from Russia and Belarus and restrictions on vessels’ access to EU ports. In a
letter to the Commission last week and obtained by POLITICO the countries also
asked that Russia and Belarus be excluded from international arrangements aimed
at easing cross-border truck traffic.
New
sanctions packages
Despite
this mounting pressure from countries feeling the heat of Russian aggression,
the focus in Brussels remains on closing the loopholes of the sanctions already
in place.
“We have to
look backwards to see what kind of impact the measures that we have already
taken” have had, Portugal's outgoing Ambassador to the EU Nuno Brito said, and
“what kind of loopholes we still have.”
Therefore,
the European Commission is preparing a “compliance package,” according to four
EU diplomats and officials.
Amongst
other things, this could focus on listing family members of oligarchs to avoid
circumvention of the sanctions, the strengthening of export controls and
potentially more sanctions against Russian propaganda channels, on top of the
earlier sanctions against Kremlin-backed media RT and Sputnik.
In
parallel, the Commission is also preparing further-reaching sanctions in case
the EU needs to move fast, for example as a reaction to a chemical attack by
Russia. But how such a broader sanctions package would go depends on the
trigger and more consultation with EU countries, taking into account their
sensitivities.
“There are
a lot of ideas floating around but it’s unclear for us which measures will be
part of the next package and which won’t. It will also depend on the trigger of
course,” said another EU diplomat.
Zosia
Wanat, Zia Weise, Hanne Cokelaere, Stuart Lau and Jacopo Barigazzi contributed
reporting.
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