European Union (EU) leaders endorsed a ban on the majority of Russian oil imports, after reaching a compromise deal with Hungary to punish Moscow for the war crime in Ukraine. The 27-nation group has been debating a potential global embargo on Russian oil for weeks, but Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has been unyielding in his opposition.
According to the recent statement from the EU, “The European Council agrees that the sixth package of sanctions against Russia will cover crude oil, as well as petroleum products, delivered from Russia into Member States, with a temporary exception for crude oil delivered by pipeline”. Following the caution from Budapest that a supply halt would devastate its economy, EU leaders met in Brussels and devised a solution to remove deliveries through pipelines from the ban.
According to the latest tweet from the European Council chief Charles Michel during the summit, “Agreement to ban export of Russian oil to the EU. This immediately covers more than two-thirds of oil imports from Russia, cutting a huge source of financing for its war machine. Maximum pressure on Russia to end the war.”
According to Ursula von der Leyen, the chief of the EU’s executive, the measure will effectively reduce roughly 90 percent of oil imports from Russia to the EU by the end of the year because Germany and Poland had renounced pipeline supply to their territory. European unity has been shaken by the dispute over the sixth package of sanctions in response to the Kremlin’s attack on Ukraine, which followed five rounds of unprecedented economic punishment against Russia.
In spite of the gap created in the embargo by Hungary’s objection, the most recent batch of penalties constitutes some of the most devastating measures that the EU has imposed to date. According to Michel, the package included removing Russia’s largest bank, Sberbank, from the global Swift system, prohibiting three state-run stations, and excluding war criminals.