By Vestnik Kavkaza
Today the fourth package of EU sanctions against Russia comes into force. It will restrict the activities of major Russian energy companies Gazprom, Rosneft, and Transneft. The head of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy, stated that the restrictions could be eliminated “in part or in whole,” depending on how the situation in Ukraine develops.
Today in Washington they will discuss how the U.S. can extend the current sanctions against Russia in the sphere of finance, defense and energy. Earlier, the EU and the U.S. restricted exports of oil equipment to Russia, including oil producing technologies for Arctic and deep water fields. The new sanctions require a ban on the exchange of oil technologies and services.
Alexei Gromyko, the acting director of the RAS Institute of Europe, says that “the EU has already launched three packets of sanctions. Moreover, the two first packages could be called symbolic, but the third one - segmental sanctions – negatively influenced several economic segments of Russia and the EU.”
“When the results of the third package revealed themselves, a serious discussion on further steps occurred in the EU. Several major pan-European business associations stood against launching new sanctions and for the elimination of previous measures. According to economic indices, the EU and the eurozone are in a difficult situation today. We know that Italy fell into recession again; the leading economy of the EU, Germany, demonstrated unexpectedly low indices for the second quarter of 2014. We know that in France they reconsidered GDP forecasts for the current year toward reduction of its growth. We saw how the President of France hesitated about giving Russia the first Mistral ship, and we saw that Russia hinted through the mass media that countermeasures could be launched if the fourth package of sanctions is approved. I think that after the third package the EU began to lose its enthusiasm for launching sanctions,” Gromyko said.
According to him, “the fourth package was lobbied by Washington and it was done purely formally. In recent weeks, certain leaders and representatives of the authorities of several EU countries stated publicly against launching new sanctions or at least for preservation of the fragile process of peacemaking which has recently been started in the southeast of Ukraine.”
The expert believes that it was difficult to choose the worst time for further escalation of economic relations between Russia, the EU and other Western countries. “We can see that the ceasefire regime is being violated every day. We are sailing close to the wind. I believe it is wrong and even stupid to provoke each other in this situation,” Gromyko stated.
Alexei Kuznetsov, the deputy director of the IMEMO of the RAS, thinks that “the EU has difference groups of influence from the point of view of political and economic interests. We saw it in their reaction to our countermeasures on food products. There are countries which depend on Russia in the energy sector for one third of their exports; of course there are those which depend on it 2-3%, and they don’t suffer. The same goes for energy. There are those which depend on Russian energy supplies significantly – the countries of Eastern Europe – and there are countries that don’t buy our gas at all, while oil supplies are insignificant and can easily be substituted.”
The expert says that when the third package was launched, Gazprom “tried to show that there is unfair competition. For example, it was forced out from the Baltic market where it was a major investor. Who is the main initiator of sanctions against energy companies? Isn’t it our main rivals? Whether they would be in Ukraine or not, there is a nice opportunity to force out Russian companies, as they could start foreign expansion due to the unique resource potential of Russia and effective management in the context of other TNC's of the developing world. Rosneft bought oil-producing facilities in Germany several years ago, while Gazprom invested money in infrastructure and gas storages. By launching sanctions against these companies, they want to make them weaker.”
