EU Would Welcome Return to Cooperation With Russia: European Council on Foreign Relations

MOSCOW, September 23 (RIA Novosti), Daria Chernyshova - Most members of the European Union will commend a return to cooperation with Russia and a review of the EU sanctions against Moscow, Senior Policy Fellow of the European Council on Foreign Relations Josef Janning told RIA Novosti.

“Most EU member states would welcome opportunities to return to a cooperative relationship with Russia because of Russia's significance to security and prosperity of Europe at large,” Janning said commenting on reports that Brussels may start reconsidering economic sanctions against Moscow on September 30.

“The review will happen, but any decision to lift sanctions to go back to an earlier stage in the sanctions regime will depend on the situation in Ukraine, as seen by EU member states and in light of the view taken by the President of Ukraine,” Josef Janning told RIA Novosti.

Russia’s Kommersant daily reported Tuesday that the European Union may start reconsidering economic sanctions against Moscow on September 30.

The European Union’s Foreign Affairs Council will undertake a "complex review of the implementation of the Minsk peace plan, and the ceasefire regime in particular. This review is currently in preparation," Kommersant cited the EU foreign policy chief spokeswoman Maya Kocijancic as saying.

The document will reportedly be examined by the EU Permanent Representatives Committee, which will then decide what to do about the sanctions against Russia. In the best-case scenario, EU officials may support a gradual easing of certain sanctions, the newspaper said, citing an anonymous EU source.

“Clear improvements on the peace plan and a visible or demonstrated action on its implementation will affect the decision. EU member states are not keen on imposing sanctions if it wasn't for serious reasons and if other means were available, and they would wish to honor any credible and sustained commitment of Russia towards negotiated settlements,” Janning told RIA Novosti.

“Should there be doubt on both, current sanctions will remain in place, otherwise an easing of the regime is likely. I do not see the option of a full lifting of all sanctions for the time being,” he added.

According to the President of the European Council Herman Van Rompuy, if the EU Council’s survey of the implementation of the peace plan coordinated in Minsk shows that the situation in Ukraine inspires confidence, the European Commission and the EU foreign policy service will be instructed to make proposals with the aim to amend, suspend or partly or fully lift the sanctions against Russia.

Representatives of Russia, Ukraine, the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk people’s republics and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe brokered a ceasefire agreement between Kiev and eastern Ukrainian independence forces during the meeting of the Contact Group on Ukraine held in Minsk on September 5.