EU Ambassador Says US, EU Sanctions Closely Coordinated
The EU ambassador to Washington, Stavros Lambrinidis, said that settling trade irritants between the U.S. and Europe and setting up the EU-U.S. Trade and Technology Council made it easy to get a unified front on export controls done quickly after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The TTC "ensured every player that’s important in this field could get on the phone and get it done," he said during a March 9 webinar hosted by the World Trade Center in Washington, D.C., and the Washington Intergovernmental Professional Group.
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Lambrinidis also said that coordination on sanctions has been extremely close, from top political levels to technical levels. "If [Russian President Vladimir Putin's] hope was his invasion would end up dividing us, he ended up waking up to a very unpleasant reality. He was clearly hoping or gambling, maybe, that maybe one or two or three countries in Europe would say ‘We don’t want to go that far’" on sanctions.
The sanctions that the West agreed to "are going to massively hit the Russian economy now and in years to come," he said. In practice, the collapse of the ruble due to restrictions on the Russian Central Bank will hike inflation dramatically in Russia, he said. Russia's Central Bank hiked interest rates to double digits in response, which makes it hard for Russian businesses to borrow. With the restrictions on the SWIFT financial transfer network, it's going to be highly problematic to make payments to Russian entities, and if they can be done, it will be "in a much more tedious and expensive way," he said.
He said the EU has banned Airbus from selling aircraft or spare parts to Russian airlines, and Boeing is facing the same restriction in the U.S. The closing of European airspace means Russian cargo planes cannot move easily.
Lambrinidis said the structure that ultimately became the EU was created so that war in Europe could never happen again. He said that the EU has given aid to Ukraine since Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, and that Ukraine has drawn closer to Western Europe in the years since. He said Ukraine has addressed corruption, bolstered its independent institutions and is moving toward a more vibrant economy. "Ukrainians are very clearly on a European path," he said. "It’s possibly one of the clear reasons Mr. Putin decided he wanted to eliminate Ukraine as a country. This is a vibrant democracy that Mr. Putin cannot stomach."
Russia has been focused on the prospect that Ukraine would join the defense alliance of NATO, but Ukraine may be even more interested in joining the EU, which would provide for more economic development and economic integration with Western Europe. The items Lambrinidis mentioned are all areas that the EU wants to see progress on before it accepts former Soviet states into the Union.
Lambrinidis said that before the invasion of Crimea, the vast majority of Ukraine's trade depended on Russia, and now the large majority is with EU member states.
"We do not produce things by violating labor rights. We do not produce things by polluting the environment and destroying the habitat," the ambassador said, referring to both the EU and the U.S. He said that goods from China and Russia do not reflect the same values, and the chasm between Russian and Chinese values and market-based liberal economies is growing. "This is not simply about money," he said.