Borrell asks Europeans to “turn down the heat” to reduce Russian gas consumption

The High Representative of the European Union (EU) for Foreign Policy, Joseph Borrellhas called on European citizens to “turn down the heat in your houses”among the measures to cut the consumption of gas from Russia in the midst of war with Ukraine. Likewise, the EU keep multiplying your sanctions against him Vladimir Putin’s regime in response to Russian aggression. Starting this Wednesday, he adds a new round -the fourth since the invasion of Ukraine began- that will hit both Russia like Belarus.

The representatives of the 27 Member States have decided to increase the list of leaders and oligarchs punished with the freezing of assets and the prohibition to set foot on European territory for his involvement in Russian aggression against Ukraine, to expel three banks of Belarus of the interbank payment communication system Swiftcomplete the list of military and civil dual-use technologies that cannot be exported to Russia and adopt sanctions against him russian maritime sectoras announced by the French presidency of the EU.

The new sanctioning package will add “a more than 100 managers of different levels of government and the Russian nomenclature” in the list of sanctioned individuals and entities, as confirmed by the head of European diplomacy, Joseph Borrell, during a debate in the plenary session of the European Parliament and will enter into force as soon as the written procedure expires and the decision is published in the Official Journal of the EU this Wednesday. The fourth round, which comes on the eve of a extraordinary summit which will bring together this Thursday and Friday in Versailles the 27 heads of state and government of the EU in Versailles, also clarifies that the crypto assets They are active covered by sanctions.

After the last extraordinary council of foreign ministers held last Friday, in which the US Secretary of State participated, Anthony Blinken, Borell has already confirmed that the EU was preparing a new round of measures that has materialized this Wednesday in the agreement confirmed by the permanent ambassadors of the European community. “It hurts us because there is a autocrat who does not care about his people”, he has valued the Estonian Prime Minister, Kaja Kallason the sanctions adopted against the Putin regime.

Russia’s energy dependency

“The challenges we face are going to require a very hard posture and we have to be willing to pay the price”recalled Borrell for his part, reiterating once again the need to end Europe’s dependence on gas in Russian and cut imports by two thirds from this year, as the European Commission proposed on Tuesday in a proposal that will be analyzed by European leaders this week.

In this sense, he pointed out that “it is an objective difficult but applicable“. “Requires macroeconomic and technical measures but also that European citizens turn down the heat from their homes, that everyone make an individual effort to cut gas consumption, like when we cut off the water when there is a drought or we put on a mask to fight the virus. What we have done with covid must be done in favor of Ukraine”, she claimed.

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And it is that the European Union continues to live conditioned by the energy ties with Russia, from where it imports 40% of the gas it consumes, 27% of its oil and 45% of its coal. For this reason, it pays “the equivalent of the reserves that we have blocked in the western banks of the Russian Central Bank”, explained Borrell claiming “cut the umbilical cord linking our economy and the Russian economy and cutting off the flow that allows you to accumulate Bookings with which finance the war”.