Commission Adopts Proposal To 'Maintain & Strengthen' Russia Sanctions

The European Commission hasissued a press release confirming its adoption of a proposal "for a new package of measures to maintain and strengthen the effectiveness of the EU's six wide-ranging and unprecedented packages of sanctions against Russia"

• "Today's “maintenance and alignment” package clarifies a number of provisions to strengthen legal certainty for operators and enforcement by Member States...Importantly, the package reiterates the Commission's determined stance to protect food security around the globe."
• "Today's package will introduce a new import ban on Russian gold... It will also strengthen reporting requirements to tighten EU asset freezes. The package also reiterates that EU sanctions do not target in any way the trade in agricultural products between third countries and Russia...Finally, it is proposed to extend the current EU sanctions for six months, until the next review at the end of January 2023."
• The proposal will now go to the European Council for member states to sign off on. Earlier today, Hungarian PM Viktor Orban - seen as the EU leader closest to Russia's Vladimir Putin - said that the EU had "shot itself in the lungs" that are "bad for the European economy".
• Orban:"The sanctions do not help Ukraine...and if it goes on like this, they will kill off the European economy...What we see right now is unbearable....The moment of truth must come in Brussels, when leaders admit they have made a miscalculation, that the sanctions policy was based on wrong assumptions and it must be changed."