The European Commission, the EU’s executive body, last Friday, adopted its proposal for the 11th sanctions package against Russia.
The focus of this package is now on cracking down on circumvention of sanctions, President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen announced Tuesday.
“We recently see a growth of highly unusual trade flows between the European Union and certain third countries. These goods then end up in Russia. This is why, we are proposing a new tool to combat sanctions circumvention,” she told a joint press conference with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy during a visit to Kyiv.
“If we see that goods are going from the European Union to third countries and then end up in Russia, we could propose to the Member States to sanction those goods’ export,” said von der Leyen.
The Commission also proposed to ban ‘shadow’ entities from Russia and third countries who are intentionally circumventing our sanctions, she noted.
Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, arrived in Kyiv on Tuesday to commemorate Europe Day.
On his part, Zelenskyy said, “we count on the 11th package of sanctions to be approved in the near future and part of it should be sanctions against the nuclear sector, “of Russia.
He thanked Von der Leyen for the EU’s readiness to provide Ukraine with ammunition and artillery shells worth 1 billion euro (USD 1.2 billion) adding that they are “needed on the battlefield already now.” Europe Day commemorates the signing of the ‘Schuman Declaration’ on 9 May 1950 in Paris. In his speech to mark the occasion, the then-French Foreign minister Robert Schuman presented his vision for a new kind of political cooperation in Europe.
Source: Kuwait News Agency