Amid talk of division in the west, this week’s summit offered a show of unity
In the lead-up to this week’s European Union summit in Brussels, Germany’s economy minister and deputy chancellor, Robert Habeck, warned that unity over sanctions on Russia was “starting to crumble”. If that assessment was intended to galvanise EU leaders at a crucial moment, it appears to have just about done its job.
The partial embargo on Russian oil imports agreed at the summit on Monday night constitutes a significant, if belated, ratcheting up of economic pressure on Vladimir Putin’s regime. After a month of negotiations between member states, objections from Hungary were finally overcome through a temporary exemption for oil transported through a Soviet-era pipeline to central Europe. Given that Germany and Poland will forgo imports from this source, by the end of the year the embargo should cover over 90% of Russian oil supplies to Europe. The effect of the ban over time, and combined with other sanctions, will be to deprive Moscow of funds and means to prosecute a prolonged war of attrition that it did not anticipate having to fight.
