Europe still needs time to finalize the sixth package of sanctions for Russia following the invasion of Ukraine, which includes the Moscow oil embargo. The Sunday meeting of the European Union ambassadors (Coreper) on the new measures also ended without an agreement and therefore the green light is postponed to next week.
“The discussions started on Wednesday have made important progress on most of the measures, there is still work to be done, based on the principle of European solidarity, to ensure the security of supply for Member States with objective infrastructural difficulties”, explains a diplomatic source. European. For next week, “contacts at all levels between the presidency, the Commission and the Member States involved are expected to identify an overall solution in view of the adoption of the sixth package in the coming days”, explains the source cited by theAnsa. “There are no divisions between Member States, only technical issues linked to security of supplies and infrastructural conversion “, it is specified.
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As reconstructed in the last hours, when the road to postponement had emerged, the option of taking a few more days has also matured in consideration of the timing of the package, or the next one (Monday 9 May) Putinian celebration of victory on Nazism, and also considering that in the meantime there will be the G7 summit by videoconference (in presence it will be held at the end of June in Germany). The fear of the European chancelleries is to define measures which, with hindsight, in a couple of days will already be overcome by events. Better to wait to understand what the Russian leader will have to say on that official (and certainly propaganda) occasion, and also take into consideration what the US president, Joe Biden, will put on the G7 table to act in a coordinated manner.
At the moment, a new meeting of the ambassadors has not yet been scheduled.
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A central node then remains that of the Eastern countries, in particular ofHungary. In the last rounds of negotiations, optimism has grown about Orban’s placet, which would still be guaranteed a soft plan: for Budapest, the Slovakia and the Czech Republic the embargo is in fact scheduled for 2025, yet to be understood whether at the beginning or at the middle of the year. Also there Bulgaria, in pressing for a similar treatment, could receive the same exemption. Likewise, these countries should also collect guarantees from an economic-financial point of view and be compensated for the effort to adapt to their oil infrastructures that will be required with the closure of the canal with Moscow.
According to a Brussels diplomat, “work still needs to be done to finalize, in a spirit of solidarity, the guarantees that are necessary for the oil supply of the Member States which are currently in a very specific situation as regards the supply from Russia via pipeline “. Contacts “at all levels” will continue “at the beginning of the week”, with the aim of “reaching a complete agreement as quickly as possible” on the sixth package. Today’s meeting, it is specified, was in any case “very useful” to ascertain that “there are no political problems regarding the embargo on oil”. The goal now is to “finalize the package early in the week”. The High Representative of the EU Josep Borrell he had said that if an agreement on a technical level were not found “immediately”, he would convene an extraordinary Foreign Affairs Council.