Today, Europe’s fundamental values of democracy and rule of law are facing their strongest test in a fractured world struggling to respond to global imperial and authoritarian ambitions. Russia has enabled its brutal war in Ukraine through weaponizing its soft, hard, and sharp power instruments, oligarchic state capture networks and strategic corruption, directly targeting the European Union principles and institutions. Even after the adoption of a more than a dozen of sanctions packages from the EU, the Kremlin continues to enjoy hefty inflows to its war-chest through exploiting multiple rule of law and sanctions loopholes. One of these most glaring gaps has been the exemption of Central European countries from the EU ban on the import of Russian crude oil and oil products that has generated around $15 billion for Russian companies since December 2022.
To explore this critical issue, the Center for the Study of Democracy (CSD) in cooperation with the Czech data analytics company, Datlab, organized a policy roundtable during the Forum 2000 international conference in Prague on 14 October. The discussion delved into three main topics:
- Strengthening sanctions enforcement to accelerate the strategic phaseout from Russian energy
- Countering Russian influence beyond Europe, bolstering democratic resilience across the world.
- Proposing Western economic initiatives to empower frontline countries in order to shape a new Transatlantic democratic resilience
The roundtable featured a distinguished panel of key EU and NATO current and former policymakers, as well as influential analysts focusing on countering the threat of the growing authoritarian influence of Russia and China:
- Isaac Levi, Europe-Russia Policy & Energy Analysis Team Lead, Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), United Kingdom
- Danuše Nerudová, Member, European Parliament, Czechia
- Stefanie Babst, Independent Strategic Advisor and former Deputy Assistant Secretary General for NATO, Germany
- Florindo Chivucute, Executive Director, Friends of Angola, Angola
The panelists focused on how despite multiple EU sanctions packages against Russia, significant loopholes remain, allowing Russian firms to earn billions. A key focus was on Central European countries, some of which continue to import Russian oil, and the rise of “gray exports” through third countries like Turkey and Kazakhstan. Speakers agreed that there is a need for a new Transatlantic long-term containment strategy for Russia, which can help close these gaps. The success of such a strategy, however, would hinge on much greater political will by Western leaders.
Relate to this, panelists agreed that there is also a need for the reform of the EU sanctions enforcement institutional framework, which would transfer the responsibility for sanctions enforcement from the Member States to a common EU institution with a mandate to conduct cross-border investigations into potential evasion schemes. The panel explored how the EU can adopt stronger risk assessment tools to identify sanctioned entities and prevent European companies from unknowingly doing business with them.
One of the core themes of the talk was the strategic decoupling from Russian energy and broader economic influence. Panelists stressed the importance of reducing dependency on Russia fossil fuels through diversified energy sources, and improving the EU’s regulatory framework to phase out reliance on authoritarian regimes. The discussion highlighted the need for the EU and transatlantic partners to empower countries in Africa and Latin America economically and politically, to build resilience against authoritarian influence. This requires a new economic security strategy where the West provides a strategic relationship to developing countries that incentivize them to reject the attempts of Russia and China to capture strategic sectors of the local economies.
