by
N. Peter Kramer
It will be on their agenda when they gather a few days later for their year-end summit meeting in Brussels. The sanctions formally expire the end of January 2016.
The failure of the foreign ministers to renew the sanctions for a further six months signals cracks in the EU’s unified stance against Russia. Italy insisted that the measures required more discussion. Russia is a significant economic partner for Italy.
The energy industry has close ties to Gazprom, the Russian natural gas exporter, and the Italian farming and fashion industries suffer an enormous loss of business as a result of the measures imposed on Europe by Moscow, in response on the EU boycott of Russian industries.
Italy, France and some other European powers want Russia’s help to stop the war in Syria that has fueled terrorism and has caused that huge numbers of migrants entered EU memberstates.
The concerns were highlighted by the attacks in Paris last month involving jihadists who had passed through Greece posing as refugees.
French President Hollande has already spoken about the need to ease the sanctions on Russia, and after the Paris attacks he flew to Moscow to talk with his Russian colleague Putin.
‘There are signs in Europe of a wider change of thinking on Russia’, you can hear in the Brussels EU temples, and
‘Italy particularly is sending strong signals’.
On the other hand, listening for instance to Baltic sources, you hear that ‘there are no reasons at all for delaying the sanctions’. For the Baltic States Russia will be forever what the red cape is for the bull.
Now it’s up to Donald Tusk, the European Council President, to add the sanctions to the agenda of the summit.
The expectations are that the sanctions will be renewed.
