The proposal of the European Commission on the sixth package of sanctions against russia submitted to the Council of the European Union was unanimously approved by the members of the EU Executive Board.
This was announced by the official representative of the European Commission Eric Mamer, Interfax-Ukraine reports.
"As for the support [of the proposals] by the commission, it was full. I will remind you that our proposal was approved by the written procedure, which in any case requires the unanimous consent of all members of the board," - said the spokesman on Wednesday at a briefing in Brussels.
The sanctions proposals should now be considered by EU Member States, first at the level of the EU Permanent Representatives Committee and then the EU Council will formally approve them. The European Council must either accept the European Commission's sanctions proposal or amend it.
Mamer declined to comment on the timing of the oil embargo, but reminded that EU President Ursula von der Leyen had defined them as six months for crude oil and the end of 2022 for the refined one. He also reminded that "some member states are completely dependent on russian oil imports."
"The Commission provides exceptions for the most dependent countries, which do not have the opportunity to follow the sanctions. We fully recognize that some Member States, given their geographical location, are dependent on the oil from russia. And we recognize the specific nature of this situation. This should be taken into account. And we have taken it into account. The Council should decide on the further course of this procedure," - the European Commission representative continued.
According to Western media, Bulgaria, Hungary and Slovakia would like to refrain from the oil embargo. Discussions on the sanctions package are to be continued at the meeting of EU ambassadors tomorrow.
An exhaustive list of new anti-russian sanctions has not yet been released. Officially, it was a gradual introduction of an oil embargo to reduce funding for the russian military machine.
It is also proposed to exclude from SWIFT Sberbank and two other financial institutions critical for russia, as well as to impose sanctions against russian media.
Unofficially, according to media reports, it is proposed to ban russians from buying real estate in Europe and impose restrictions on Patriarch Kirill.
The consent of all 27 members of the European Union is required to approve the sanctions, no voting happened yet.