The European Union still has a lot to gain from a continued relationship with Russia, three EU lawmakers told Sputnik on Monday, after the top Russian diplomat accused the bloc of undermining bilateral ties
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 15th February, 2021) The European Union still has a lot to gain from a continued relationship with Russia, three EU lawmakers told Sputnik on Monday, after the top Russian diplomat accused the bloc of undermining bilateral ties.
Sergey Lavrov told a news conference on Monday that ties between Moscow and Brussels had been left in tatters by years of disruptive EU policies. He said Russia was ready to try and restore them but added that the ball was in the EU's court.
"The EU is too weak and beholden to anti-Russian lobbyists to articulate an independent position on foreign policy. If it had any integrity, it would realize the benefits of Eurasian cooperation for its member states," Harald Weyel, a spokesman on the German parliament's EU affairs committee, said.
The AfD lawmaker said it would be "regrettable but understandable" if Russia chose to break off relations with the EU. The bloc has been weighing new sanctions on Russia after it was rocked by unauthorized protests over the arrest of controversial opposition activist Alexey Navalny.
"The EU is likely to impose new sanctions against Russia [over] the Navalny case. The same EU institutions that have chosen Navalny as their favored oppositional candidate would find his positions entirely unacceptable if they were expressed in Europe," Weyel said.
Ioannis Lagos, an independent lawmaker from Greece who is a member of the European Parliament's delegation to the EU-Russia Parliamentary Cooperation Committee, told Sputnik that the EU's concerns about Navalny's fate demonstrated its hypocritical attitudes.
"The Navalny case is an internal issue of Russia and every state, having its democratically elected political leaders, has the authority to operate independently, autonomously within the limits of law. I am mystified by the EU΄s obsession in interfering in the internal issues of foreign countries," he said.
Lagos argued that the EU's return to a dialogue with Russia would produce only positive results for both sides.
Alexander Ulrich, a member of the Left Party and a spokesman on the German parliament's economic and energy committee, said that diplomatic talks with Russia must continue. He objected to the United States' continued efforts to torpedo the construction of the Nord Stream 2 gas link.
"Obtaining gas from Russia via a modern pipeline has financial and environmental advantages for Germany and Europe compared with fracked gas from the US... A halt to construction would unnecessarily strain German-Russian relations and would be economically damaging," he warned.
