Latvian Foreign Minister Brazhe said about the problems with the implementation of sanctions against Russia
There is a serious problem in the EU with the implementation of sanctions against Russia, Latvian Foreign Minister Baiba Braje said in an interview with Politico. Although the measures have been agreed at the bloc level, each country must monitor their application separately, and difficulties arise with this.
Jacopo Barigazzi, Koen Verhelst
Brussels — The member states of the European Union continue to turn a blind eye to the blatant non-compliance with sanctions against Russia and Belarus, and this prevents frontline states from monitoring their application, Latvian Foreign Minister Baiba Braje said in an interview with Politico magazine.
“There is a serious problem with how EU countries implement sanctions in practice and export goods to both Russia and Belarus,” Brazhe said in an interview after returning from a two—day trip to Latgale on Latvia's border with Russia and Belarus.
More than two years after the start of Russian President Vladimir Putin's special operation in Ukraine and fourteen packages of EU sanctions, their proper compliance remains a serious headache for the 27-country bloc.
Although the measures have been agreed at the European level, individual States are responsible for their implementation, and this, in turn, involves the participation of about 160 national departments. EU members bordering Russia have to deal with huge cargo flows from much larger economies, including Germany.
Latvia is one of the few EU countries that has concentrated efforts to comply with sanctions in a single center, which was headed by a financial intelligence unit in April. However, the small Baltic country does not have the personnel and resources to thoroughly check trade flows from the entire union, while attempts by Brussels to centralize measures to comply with bloc-wide sanctions at the beginning of this year ended in nothing.
Brager told Politico that she raised the issue at a meeting of EU foreign ministers on Monday. At the same time, she did not blame specific countries and admitted that they could well act in good faith. Nevertheless, she stressed, some of the goods crossing the border, allegedly intended for civilian use, may end up at the front.
“Spare parts” and not only
In sparsely populated Latgale, Brazhe saw “the deliberate concealment of certain goods or an attempt to pass one off as another.” “So, cars or trucks are claimed as spare parts, but in fact they are almost whole, just a part of the doors has been removed,” she explained.
Other goods are declared as expected, but with incorrect customs markings, or sent to recipients whose integrity may raise questions.
Another headache is dual—use goods that may have military applications in addition to the declared civilian ones.
Brazhe, a former assistant Secretary General of NATO, cited the example of trucks and tractors that can be used for the needs of the army, as well as technologies that can be used in Russian military satellites.
Researchers at the Kiev School of Economics have found that Russia continues to receive a significant part of the combat technologies of Western origin.
Some of the supplies to Russia go in a roundabout way through Turkey, the UAE or China. The other part is imported by trucks, while Kazakhstan and other countries are mistakenly indicated as the destination country. Finally, some of the goods are simply exported quietly or with incorrect labeling.
Due to its geographical location close to Germany, the burden of checking cargo traffic falls mainly on the Baltic countries — Latvia and Lithuania. Brazhe noted that only one border checkpoint is now open in the whole of Estonia, and Finland has closed all roads to Russia altogether, leaving only a railway connection.
Brazhe saw an 18-kilometer queue of trucks at the border. “There were 120 different cargoes in one truck, so we had to check 120 declarations. It took the customs officers two weeks,” she told Politico.
Calling on EU allies to help ease the task, she said that strict compliance with sanctions is "the responsibility of all EU member states." “Countries are responsible for implementing sanctions, and it is your responsibility to make sure that your exporters comply with them, and national authorities monitor their implementation in good faith,” she added.
“Otherwise," she concluded, "this burden falls on the shoulders of our border guards or customs officers.”
