The European Commission will ban imports into the EU of “key” iron and steel products from Russia, as part of its fourth package of sanctions against Russia announced on Friday. Authorities are however yet to specify what exact products will be targeted, Kallanish notes.
The ban “will hit a central sector of Russia’s system, deprive it of billions of export revenues and ensure that our citizens are not subsidising Putin’s war,” the Commission said in a note on Friday.
Other measures, being enacted together with G7 partners, include revoking Russia’s status of most-favoured-nation, which includes working to suspend Russia’s membership in leading multilateral financial institutions. The EU will also continue pressuring Russian elites close to Putin as well as their families and enablers, and make sure the Russian state and its elites cannot use crypto assets to circumvent sanctions.
It will also aim to ban the export of any EU luxury goods to Russia and ban new European investments across Russia’s energy sector.
Previous rounds of EU sanctions have hit Russian banks and certain oligarchs linked to the steel sector, which coupled with drastically reduced Black Sea shipping activity have made it more difficult to trade steel with Russia. However, the overwhelming majority of Russian steelmakers were not technically prohibited from exporting to the EU, if financing and freight could be arranged. This latest round of sanctions appears to be the hammer blow to ferrous trade between Russia and the bloc.
Adam Smith Germany
