EU Agree On Oil Embargo, Partial One

The European Union overcame the resistance of a number of skeptic states and made a political decision to impose an oil embargo against Russia.

This was announced on Tuesday night by European Council President Charles Michel and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, Yevropeiska Pravda online media reports.

Charles Michel stressed that the decision was made by consensus, bringing together all the EU states. As you know, Hungary opposed the introduction of such a ban to the last, but at a personal meeting of the European Council, it agreed to it.

"We want to stop the Russian war machine, stop the financing of Russian aggression through pressure on the Kremlin, and today the European Council agreed on the sixth package of sanctions, which will also include a ban on oil imports from the Russian Federation with a temporary exemption for pipeline supplies," Michel said.

According to him, even with this exception, the oil embargo will be painful for the Russian Federation, as "it will immediately affect 75% of Russian oil exports to Europe and 90% by the end of the year."

Ursula von der Leyen also stressed that part of the embargo does not take effect immediately.

"The EU Council is now obliged to finalize a decision that will stop 90% of Russian oil exports to the EU until the end of the year. And we will soon return to the issue of the remaining 10%," she explained.

According to EU procedures, the decisions of the summit must be legally implemented by separate decisions of the EU Council, which detail the procedure for entry into force.

The publication notes that pipeline oil accounts for 30%, not 10%, of EU imports. However, the two EU states that receive Russian pipeline oil, Poland and Germany, agreed to voluntarily stop these supplies.

"This gives us confidence that the supply of the northern branch of the Druzhba oil pipeline will stop before the end of the year," von der Leyen said.

As Ukrainian News Agency reported, earlier the EU proposed to stop all imports of Russian oil until the beginning of next year. Hungary and Slovakia were given until the end of 2024 to comply, while the Czech Republic would have received an exemption until June 2024. But Hungary was categorically against it.

Later, Hungary called the condition under which it would support the embargo on Russian oil.

The United States proposed to the European Union not to impose an oil embargo against the Russian Federation, but to impose a tax on oil.

Also on May 11, Politico reported, citing its own sources, that the EU is considering allocating compensation to Hungary so that it agrees to support the sanctions.