European Union: Slovakia gives up blockade of new EU Russia sanctions

The Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico has surprisingly announced that it ends the blockade of new EU sanctions against Russia. He gave the Slovakia representatives to give their approval for the 18th EU sanctions package this Friday, he said in a Facebook video.

It would be “counterproductive” for the interests of Slovakia as an EU member to continue to block the procedure. The background to Fico’s blockade was a dispute over an EU regulation that would result in a complete gas import stop from Russia from 2028.

In Brussels, it was expected that the sanction package can now finally be decided. Already this Friday morning, the constant representatives of the Member States could come together for a special meeting, it said from EU circles.

Failure of Russian gas deliveries

Slovakia was actually not about the Russia sanctions. There were no concerns about this, it had always been said in Bratislava. However, the Slovak government wants to prevent an EU regulation that provides for a complete gas import stop from Russia from 2028. Slovakia has a delivery contract that is running until 2034 with the Russian gas company Gazprom and fears that it will be sentenced to huge penalty payments by an international arbitration tribunal.

Fico now explained in his video by the fact that Slovakia had received important promises after intensive negotiations. “The confirmed guarantees on the part of the EU concern the gas price and possible delivery bottlenecks, transit fees and the possibility to call out a crisis situation if there are extreme prices or gas deficiency.” If necessary, a crisis mechanism would be triggered, which could last until a temporary cancellation of the import ban for Russian gas.

On Wednesday evening, Fico had said that Slovakia would continue to block the sanctions until the question of Russian energy deliveries from 2028 had been clarified. He announced this in a letter to EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. Instead of vaguely promising support, there must be concrete guarantees.

In addition to Slovakia, only Malta recently had concerns about the planned measures that the Russian income from exporting oil in third countries was supposed to reduce. The country fears unfairly large disadvantages for domestic shipping companies if the so -called oil price lid is reduced too much.

Diplomats were recently confident that Malta will not stop the sanction package in the end.

Also sanctions against North Stream pipelines

The new sanction package is also to hit the Russian financial sector. In addition, sanctions are intended to rule out a conceivable restoration of the Gaspipelines Nord Stream 1 and the use of the pipelines from Nord Stream 2.

The tubes run through the Baltic Sea from Russia to Germany and could enable Russia in the event of use. However, they would have to be repaired again. One of the two tubes from Nord Stream 2 was destroyed in an attack in September 2022, as was the strands of the already used North Stream 1 pipeline.

Robert Fico’s video message on Facebook, Slovakian