4
May
2022
Watch
The social and economic consequences for the EU of the Russian war in Ukraine - reinforcing the EU’s capacity to act (debate)
Madam President, there is a broad consensus here and in other EU institutions that economic sanctions on Russia are the most effective way of pressuring Russia to stop its aggression in Ukraine. The speed, efficiency and accuracy of the sanctions proposed by the Commission need to be commended, especially its efforts to create an unprecedented unity among Member States. It is unfortunate that it took such a disaster to realise the unhealthy dependence of our continent on Russian energy supplies and to start discussions about a unified energy market, based on diversified energy resources and solidarity among Member States. In the past weeks, Russia has demonstrated that it’s ready to use energy as a strategic weapon to further its aggressive geopolitical objectives. It must be clear by now that Russia in the long term is an unreliable partner for supplying energy to the EU. Therefore, I would like to ask the Commission to focus not only on fossil fuels when it comes to sanctions, but also to target nuclear energy. Nuclear deals struck by Russian Rosatom with the governments of various Member States must be phased out. Finland showed the way by terminating the Fennovoima deal with Rosatom, which supplied a nuclear reactor and was the financial backer of the project, as well as the main shareholder. It’s time that Hungary follows suit and terminates its equally controversial Paks deal with Rosatom. The Commission would be right, in its next sanction package, to ban every Russian nuclear deal on the continent.