The Union can no longer boycott effective large Russian sectors and companies. Those that still exist are taboo for various reasons.
The illegal sham votes in three regions of Ukraine occupied by Russian troops about the union with the Russian Federation, plus daily new evidence of war crimes by the Russian army and also the undisguised threat of using nuclear weapons: Russia’s dictator Vladimir Putin told the Union last week alone served numerous occasions to enact new sanctions. At the weekend, diplomats from the member states discussed this with specialist officials from the European Commission and the European External Action Service. This week, as a result of these discussions, the Commission is due to present to member states its proposal for the seventh set of EU sanctions against Russia since the February 24 attack on Ukraine.
It is already clear with a probability bordering on certainty what will not be included in this package – with the exception of a few new travel bans and asset freezes against Russian politicians, civil servants and the military. First, calls from several member states, most notably the Baltic and Poland, for a boycott of Russia’s nuclear power industry are dying. In fact, the state-owned Rosatom concern is currently irreplaceable for some Eastern European Member States with its supplies of fuel and other services required for the operation of nuclear power plants. This primarily affects Hungary, whose Prime Minister, Viktor Orbán, would like to abolish the sanctions almost entirely anyway.