War in Ukraine: The EU will continue sanctions on Russia – Gold a possible target

Its leaders The European Union will keep pressure on Russia at this week’s summit high, stressing that the work with sanctionsaccording to a draft of their conclusions, while considering gold in the next round of sanctionsas broadcast by the Athenian News Agency.

It is worth noting that from beginning of the invasion of Ukrainein February, the EU has adopt six packages of sanctions against Russia and Belarus, but several sectors, including gas, have not been affected as EU governments diligently try to avoid measures that could harm their economy more than that of Russia.

“Work on sanctions will continue, including to strengthen their enforcement and prevent them from being circumvented,” EU leaders said at the end of their regular summit on June 23 and 24, according to the latest version of their draft conclusions, dated June 20, which was seen by Reuters.

The text is one compromise between Scandinavian and eastern countries, on the one hand, which have pushed for a clear reference to a seventh package in the summit declaration, and countries such as Germany and the Netherlands, which insist that the EU should rather focus on implementing existing measures, rather than immediately add more.

In an earlier version of the text, there was no mention of more work on sanctions, and Reuters notes that the change represents a victory for the clergy. However, the new text does not explicitly mention a seventh package, as Berlin wanted.

Although no new sanctions package is being prepared at the moment, work is continuing to identify areas that could be affected, officials said.

THE gold is one of the possibilities new goalsaccording to officials familiar with the content of the discussions.

At a closed-door meeting of EU envoys last week, the Denmark suggested that the subsequent sanctions could relate to goldamong other areas, according to a representative of the Danish ambassador to the EU.

A person familiar with the work being done on sanctions told Reuters that the European Commission was working to gold is added in a possible next round although it is not yet clear whether the measure could ban exports to Russia, imports from Russia or both.

Gold is one asset crucial for the Russian Central Bank, which, due to Western sanctions, faces restrictions on access to some of its assets located abroad.

Source: News Beast

You may also like