The Politico reports that EU diplomats will soon start discussing the “additional elements that will eventually become a proposal for a complete ban” on imports all Russian aluminum products.
The EU is trying to introduce restrictions against Russian energy as well: the aluminum smelting process requires a huge amount of electricity, and the prices for energy carriers make up to 40% of the production cost.
According to the European Aluminum trade organization, the previous rounds of sanctions failed to affect about 85% of Russian aluminum exports to EU.
As Politico writes, EU hopes to agree on a package of sanctions before the two-year anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2024.
“We think it would be good to have a package for the second anniversary of the war,” EU diplomat emphasized.
However, according to another European diplomat, the biggest challenge in the development of a new sanctions package is that “all major goods are already under sanctions and some other fields for sanctions are unavailable, in particular nuclear power or liquefied natural gas.”
Hungary and some other eastern EU countries opposed sanctions on the Russian nuclear sector. Also, Russia’s Rosatom is currently building two new reactors for Hungary, while many EU countries, Germany in particular, opposed the sanctions on Russian liquefied natural gas.