EU meeting to speed up sanctions on Russia

JULY 22, 2014 

For all the tough talk, Europe is unlikely to punish Russia over last week’s downing of an airliner over Ukraine beyond speeding up the imposition of already agreed individual sanctions when the bloc’s foreign ministers meet on Tuesday, Reuters reports.

The severity of future European Union sanctions could depend on the Netherlands, which suffered the greatest loss of life when the Malaysia Airlines flight was brought down.

US President Barack Obama has piled pressure on Europe for a more forceful response, and the three leading EU powers – Britain, France and Germany – said they should be ready to ratchet up sanctions.

But demonstrating the difficulty of getting agreement from 28 member states, London clashed with Paris over France’s decision to press ahead with the sale of warships to Russia.

British Prime Minister David Cameron said on Monday such an order had become “unthinkable”.

“We need to put the pressure on with all our partners to say that we cannot go on doing business as usual with a country when it is behaving in this way,” Cameron said.

He also said the European Union should consider hard-hitting economic sanctions and that Russia could not expect access to European markets, capital and technical expertise.

Diplomats said Tuesday’s meeting in Brussels was still not expected to go much further than agreeing on the people and possibly companies to be hit with asset freezes under a more aggressive framework agreed last week. Previously, they had only said they would decide on the list by the end of July.

Several diplomats said moving towards more sweeping economic sanctions could only be decided by heads of government. The attitude of the Netherlands, which lost 193 people in the incident, would be critical, the diplomats said.

“The impulse must come from The Hague because they have the moral mandate to demand a resolute, firm reaction. Everything depends on that,” one EU diplomat said on condition of anonymity.

“I think the events will serve to speed up sanctions, but as long as no new European council (of leaders) is called, ministers cannot go further even if they want to,” another EU diplomat said.

The next scheduled summit of EU leaders is on August 30, though EU members could call for another emergency meeting.

A summit of EU leaders on July 16, the day before the airliner was shot down, agreed the EU would punish Russian companies that help to destabilize Ukraine and block new loans to Russia.

The wording was deliberately vague as the meeting agreed to target “entities, including from the Russian Federation, that are materially or financially supporting actions undermining or threatening Ukraine’s sovereignty”.

Adding companies to any sanctions list is more complicated than naming individuals because of the risk of legal challenges.

The United States and its allies have blamed pro-Russian rebels and Moscow itself over the downing of the plane. Russia has denied involvement.

Speaking in parliament on Monday, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said the EU would impose further sanctions on Russia if it were proved that Russia had been directly or indirectly responsible for bringing the plane down.

Analysts say it could be extremely difficult to prove responsibility for the disaster, which has been viewed as a potential turning point for international pressure to resolve the crisis in Ukraine.

Hundreds have died in a pro-Russian insurgency in eastern Ukraine, which broke out after Russia annexed the Crimea peninsula following the toppling of a Moscow-backed president in Kiev in February by pro-Western protesters.

Britain has said it is ready to pay the price of moving towards a new phase of EU economic sanctions because much bigger costs were at stake.

London is a prime destination for Russian businesses, and Russian oligarchs are major property owners in Britain.

Britain’s energy major BP already faces the prospect of fallout following the U.S. decision to sanction Russia’s largest oil firm Rosneft, of which BP owns a fifth.