The key facts

  • The European Commission has created its first permanent sanctions office targeting Russia
  • The unit will cover the development and application of measures as well as the fight against circumvention
  • Work on the 22nd sanctions package continues with no announced timeline

The European Commission's new unit

The European Commission has established, within its structure, the first permanent sanctions office whose activities are aimed against Russia. European Commission spokesperson Shion McElhinney announced this at a briefing in Brussels, reports Gazeta.Ru citing TASS.

The office's area of responsibility

According to McElhinney, the new unit will oversee the entire 'sanctions ecosystem': from the development of restrictive measures at the political level to their practical application and efforts to counter circumvention. Thus, the office consolidates functions that were previously distributed across different areas of the Commission's work.

The 22nd package and Moscow's reaction

The European Commission spokesperson also confirmed that work is ongoing on the 22nd sanctions package against Russia, but declined to name a possible date for its presentation. In October, the European Union already imposed restrictions on 1,569 companies and individuals linked to Russia's military-industrial complex; the restrictions also affected a number of other organizations which, in Brussels' view, violate decisions of international bodies. In this regard, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova stated that extending restrictions to a large number of legal entities and individuals demonstrates the impotence of the regional community, and in her words, the EU has already exhausted its levers of pressure on Moscow.