European Commission Prepares 17th Sanctions Package Against Russia

The European Commission (EC) has begun preparations for the 17th sanctions package against Russia. Currently, the process is in its initial stages, and specific proposals may be presented as early as the beginning of summer.

This is reported by AgroReview

This was reported by European diplomats, particularly according to EUobserver. One of the publication’s sources stated:

“We are waiting for proposals from the Commission”

.

On the other hand, another diplomat pointed out that

“The EU’s Foreign Policy Service and the Commission are working on this… Proposals will likely be presented at the beginning of summer”

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Furthermore, the necessity of considering the development of peace negotiations was emphasized. As one of the sources noted,

“We need to see how negotiations between the US, Russia, and Ukraine develop”

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It is known that Russian President Vladimir Putin has expressed a willingness to discuss even a temporary ceasefire, but only on the condition that the EU allows Rosselkhozbank, which is crucial for food exports from Russia, to return to the international SWIFT payment system.

At the “Coalition of Willing” summit held on March 27 in Paris, 31 European countries confirmed that it is still too early to lift sanctions against Russia. French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer expressed their support for this position.

Scholz stated:

“There is no sense in lifting sanctions until peace is actually achieved – and, unfortunately, we are still quite far from that”

. Macron added that

“now is not the time to lift sanctions”

.

Starmer noted that

“on the contrary, we discussed how we can strengthen sanctions to support the US initiative to bring Russia to the negotiating table through further pressure from this group of countries”

, which includes increasing economic pressure on Russia and implementing new stringent sanctions that reduce the aggressor country’s income from energy resources.

Since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the EU has already implemented 16 sanctions packages against the aggressor, the latest of which was adopted on the third anniversary of the invasion on February 24, 2025. This sanctions package covers 13 banks from Russia and includes a ban on transactions for credit and financial institutions registered outside of Russia that use the Financial Messaging System (FMS) of the Bank of Russia.

The EU has also closed access to SWIFT for 23 Russian banks, covering all major financial institutions except Gazprombank, which handles international gas transactions. Other EU sanctions include:

• freezing the assets of the Russian central bank amounting to over 200 billion euros;
• an embargo on trade with Russia amounting to 140 billion euros per year;
• personal sanctions against 2,400 Russian individuals and entities.