‘Economic cooperation with Russia increasingly difficult’

Von der Leyen said she is planning new proposals for dealing with Russia, including regarding the Nord Stream 2 Baltic Sea pipeline…reports Asian Lite News

Economic cooperation between Europe and Russia is becoming increasingly difficult, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said.

“Many attempts on our side over many, many years, almost decades to improve [the] relationship with Russia did not have (the) success they deserved,” dpa news agency quoted von der Leyen as saying at an EU summit here on Monday.

“Economic cooperation over time has gotten more and more difficult,” she said, adding that the Russian economy needs to be modernised.

“What we see today is an economy that is lacking an enormous amount of modernization that would be necessary, an economy that is highly depending on energy revenues, but a regime that is not willing to interact in a constructive way with us.”

The EU has been consistent in its approach towards Russia, who continues to challenge our interests & values.

The @EU_Commission will present a report at the June #EUCO on the state of our relations with Russia.

— Ursula von der Leyen (@vonderleyen) May 24, 2021

Von der Leyen said she is planning new proposals for dealing with Russia, including regarding the Nord Stream 2 Baltic Sea pipeline.

She said the options would be discussed in a report on relations with Russia at the end of June.

The report will present “the different policy options that will show how we can deal with Russia”, she added.

Meanwhile, on Monday, leaders of the EU member states had agreed to cut the bloc’s air links with Belarus following Sunday’s Ryanair flight diversion incident.

According to the conclusions of the special EU summit, the 27-member bloc strongly condemned the incident which endangered aviation safety and called on the International Civil Aviation Organisation to urgently investigate “this unprecedented and unacceptable incident.”

Leaders of the member states urged the European Council to adopt the necessary measures to ban overflight of EU airspace by Belarusian airlines; prevent access to bloc’s airports of Belarusian flights; and called on all EU-based carriers to avoid overflight of Belarus, according to the conclusions.

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