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EU countries reach deal on 21st Russia sanctions package (tvpworld.com)
submitted 4 days ago by to c/europe@feddit.org
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[–] 14 points 4 days ago (3 children)

Not sure I will ever understand why we didn't go all in right at the start, or at least at much greater speed. The cost of this slow walking, not just financial, is hard to imagine.

I mean, good we have a new watered down sanctions package I guess.

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  • [–] 18 points 4 days ago* (1 child)

    1. Because of Hungary

    2. Because those sanctions also hit EU countries. You want to apply sanctions where it hits Russia more than EU because each export ban is a EU company losing profits. If too many people inside EU suffer because of those sanctions support for them will drop. When people turn against Ukraine populists backed by Russia win elections. You do it gradually so companies can switch to different markets instead of going bankrupt. People keep jobs and keep supporting Ukraine

    3. Because sanctions don't hit all EU countries equally. With each package they are basically fighting over who will take the hit for them. It takes a lot of counting and haggling. Even without Hungary reaching a consensus is difficult

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  • [–] 0 points 4 days ago (1 child)

    Obviously Orbán was a disaster but still many sanction packages got past while he was still in office. It's not enough of an explanation.

    As for point 2 and 3 - we could have shared the burden. If in a practical sense country A gets hit the hardest, then country B and C can offer support (more likely through some general mechanism, but still).

    It's just absurd short term thinking, the longer it lasts it only costs us more but also for Ukraine. Death by a thousand cuts just seems a ridiculous strategy in this context.

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  • [–] 5 points 4 days ago (1 child)

    Obviously Orbán was a disaster but still many sanction packages got past while he was still in office. It’s not enough of an explanation.

    They did but it took a lot of effort and time.

    As for point 2 and 3 - we could have shared the burden. If in a practical sense country A gets hit the hardest, then country B and C can offer support (more likely through some general mechanism, but still).

    They did share the burden but negotiating this took effort and time.

    That's why it was a slow and gradual process. If they would try to completely cut ties with Russia they would spend years negotiating this before anything was actually done. Doing it gradually let them introduce some sanctions while they worked on the next package.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 days ago*

    A positive side effect is that it produces news, that it keeps the war and the fact that it's ongoing in the news.

    Another is the damning impression of "it/these will continue to get worse for Russia". With one clear cut there's less continuous pressure.

    ExLisper gave the political process reasons. The political process is democratic but unfortunately slow.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 days ago (1 child)

    Agreed. I think there were a lot of “let’s just see how it plays out before we upend our energy infrastructure” but of course hindsight shows how wrong that was.

    I mean, I can see how some might have been cautious in the first - several months? To re-work how everyone was going to get oil, gas, and electricity - though it was obvious to some of us on day . . . Well, day two, anyway. Some of us are slow.

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    • [–] 12 points 4 days ago (2 children)

    Greece making it clear they're lacking ethics.

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    • [–] 4 points 4 days ago*

    Talks over this latest set of sanctions lasted weeks, with many measures facing internal opposition, leading to some proposals being watered down or excluded completely. 

    Plans to prevent EU firms from transporting Russian LNG – liquified natural gas – to third countries were reportedly dropped at a late stage in response to Greece’s opposition. Ambitions to introduce a ban on Russian ex-combatants from entering the EU were also drastically scaled back.

    . . . The package designates 94 Russian financial institutions – mainly banks – alongside Moscow's stock exchange, Reuters reported. Once adopted, these entities will fall under the full weight of sanctions which include asset freezes, travel and transaction bans.

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    [–] 4 points 4 days ago

    Soon we're gonna have more sanctions packages than centuries.

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