EU Should Open Dialogue With Russia Over Much Higher Losses From Sanctions - UN Rapporteur

Umer Jamshaid Published March 26, 2019 | 05:05 PM

The European Union should seek ways to overcome its disagreements with Russia, given that the bloc's financial losses from Moscow's food embargo are much higher than those Russia has suffered from EU sanctions, UN Special Rapporteur on the negative impact of the unilateral coercive measures Idriss Jazairy told Sputnik

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 26th March, 2019) The European Union should seek ways to overcome its disagreements with Russia, given that the bloc's financial losses from Moscow's food embargo are much higher than those Russia has suffered from EU sanctions, UN Special Rapporteur on the negative impact of the unilateral coercive measures Idriss Jazairy told Sputnik.

"It's crazy from the point of view of the European Union to apply the sanctions in a way that causes greater loses for European companies that it does for Russian ones ... I am sure there must be some smarter ways of discussing and negotiating to overcome the existing differences," Jazairy said.

Russia, however, has managed to mitigate losses from the EU sanctions by boosting domestic production, according to the rapporteur.

"I have studied how much the Russians were losing from these measures and how much the Europeans were losing from the reciprocation by Russia and it turned out that the Europeans were losing more than the Russians in terms of loss of income," Jazairy underlined.

Russian-EU relations soured in 2014 when the bloc imposed economic sanctions on Moscow over the armed conflict in Ukraine's east. Russia has denied having any role in the fighting and retaliated by imposing a food embargo on EU states. The European Union most recently extended its economic restrictions this past December for six more months after determining that "zero progress" had been made to implement the Minsk peace agreements.

Moscow, in turn, has repeatedly slammed the policy of having sanctions relief be conditional on the implementation of the Minsk accords, stressing that it was ceasefire guarantor nation just like France and Germany and not a party to the conflict.