Six months after the start of the war in Ukraine, Europe's will to maintain pressure on Russia for its aggression remains intact, the heads of European diplomacy assured yesterday in Prague. But after six and a half rounds of sanctions (the last round of measures was an extension of the previous one), mired in an unprecedented energy crisis, the Union is beginning to see the difficulties that its strategy is going to face in the coming months.
In an increasingly tense economic and social context, the steps that Europe takes will depend on its answer to the question of how to maintain pressure on Moscow without contributing to an escalation of the conflict at home and abroad. In other words, without creating more difficulties for European citizens and the European economy and, above all, without aggravating the military conflict and being dragged into an intervention in Ukraine.
Since the tortuous approval of the embargo on Russian oil, the balance is increasingly delicate, as was seen yesterday in Prague. The foreign ministers responded cautiously to the proposal of the Baltic and Nordic countries to veto the arrival of Russian tourists, as well as to the initiative of the EU High Representative for Foreign Policy, Josep Borrell, to launch a military training mission Ukrainians. The EU is going to seriously consider its next steps.
In the face of the staunch defense of Estonia, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Poland, Lithuania and Latvia of the total veto on the entry of Russian tourists to the Schengen zone so that ordinary citizens feel the impact of the Kremlin's actions, a measure that they are already carrying out on their own, Germany, France, Spain and the European Commission warned of the risk of feeding the victim narrative of President Vladimir Putin and contributing to the isolation of Russian society.
"There is no place for tourism in these circumstances," said Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavsky, who argued that the move would send a strong signal "to the elites of Moscow and St. Petersburg." “Private people also have to understand that war has consequences. The taxes they pay create bombs that literally kill Ukrainian children right now,” added his Estonian counterpart Urmas Reinsalu.
It is one of the arguments most cited by politicians, but Marie Dumoulin, a researcher at the pan-European think tank European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), disagrees and warns that the rejection of Russian tourists will be used by the Kremlin as propaganda against the West. "The collateral effects of a total veto would outweigh the advantages of such a measure," says Dumoulin, who considers it "illusory" to think that it will increase public pressure on the authorities or cause policy changes.
"We must not have a new iron curtain in Europe," warned Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn, who recalled that the EU has treated the conflict as "Putin's war" from the beginning. His Spanish counterpart insisted on the same idea. "We must not close the doors to those Russian sectors that are not in favor of war, that want to have contact with us and (...) know first-hand the veracity of the information," said José Manuel Albares.
Given the divergence of opinions, the compromise solution being worked on, although it does not satisfy the Baltic countries, consists of suspending the visa facilitation agreement between the EU and Russia, in force since 2007. It is not the total veto that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has requested, but it will make Russians who want to travel to the Schengen zone for tourism face a longer bureaucratic process and a higher visa cost (80 euros, instead of 35).
The idea of launching a European training mission for the Ukrainian army did not receive an immediate green light (during preliminary consultations, several capitals raised whether it would not aggravate the confrontation with Russia) but the ministers agreed to examine it and supported "starting work to define its parameters". . Although the EU has trained soldiers from several African countries and there are national training missions for the Ukrainian army, there is no precedent for such activities under the European flag on EU territory. For Borrell, the step is inevitable. "We must lay the foundations of an army that is going to have to fight for a long time, I am convinced that it can be done better by joining forces," he defended.
