Von Der Layen announces the tenth package of sanctions, just to help Moscow…
European Commission President Ursula Von Der Leyen and a team of 15 commissioners arrived in Kiev on 2 February for the first joint meeting with the Ukrainian government, with the invasion of Russia on the agenda, which began on 24 February last year, and Ukraine's application for membership of the European bloc, still on the high seas.
Speaking at a joint press conference with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy after their meeting, Von Der Leyen said the sanctions had taken a heavy toll on Moscow, "setting it back a generation", with only the price cap EU-imposed oil causing Russia to lose around 160 million euros ($176 million) a day. An affirmation that will however have caused the envy of many Italians who would like to go back a generation, to the nineties, with well-being much higher than the current one….
Responding to a remark by Zelenskiy, who said Kiev hoped the bloc's sanctions campaign would regain momentum after appearing to "slow down" of late, Von Der Leyen said the EU would "introduce with our G7 partners a further ceiling on the prices of Russian oil products, and by February 24 – exactly one year after the start of the invasion – we aim to have the tenth package of sanctions in force”.
Von Der Leyen also praised the Ukrainian government for taking swift action against corruption, one of the main conditions set by Brussels as mandatory for Kyiv's progress on its EU accession path.
In June, Ukraine was granted candidate status for joining the 27-member bloc and Zelenskiy pledged to root out the entrenched corruption that has weakened the effectiveness of state institutions, even as the country faced an increasingly aggressive Russia since 2014, culminating in the total and unprovoked invasion of Moscow.
Given the comparative growth trend of the main EU countries with Russia, one wonders whether the purpose of the sanctions is to further encourage Moscow's growth to the detriment of that of Western countries given that, despite, or thanks to, the sanctions Russia in 2023 it will grow much more than Germany, while its trade surplus remains at high levels also in January 2023 (21 billion dollars) after the record of 27 billion in the month of December 2022.
We have a vague feeling that Von Der Leyen works for Putin…
Thanks to our Telegram channel you can stay updated on the publication of new articles from Economic Scenarios.
The article Von Der Layen announces the tenth package of sanctions, just to help Moscow… comes from Scenari Economici .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/von-der-layen-annuncia-il-decimo-pacchetto-di-sanzioni-giusto-per-aiutare-mosca/ on Fri, 03 Feb 2023 11:22:56 +0000.