Representative of Norway’s ruling Progress Party and Second Vice Chair of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and Defense Christian Tybring-Gjedde has pointed to the need to remove the anti-Russian sanctions imposed by the European Union in a comment in the Aftenposten newspaper published on Wednesday.
According to the lawmaker, Europe’s stance on anti-Russian sanctions should be reconsidered due to the expansion of the US sanctions, which will have “negative effects for Norway and other allies [of Washington].” He noted that Europe “must realize that Russia will not return Crimea,” but the implementation of the Minsk agreements must be a necessary condition for removing sanctions.
“This issue is now discussed in Europe, and I believe Norway should tackle it with the European leaders and work on removing the sanctions,” Tybring-Gjedde said. He added that the Norwegian Foreign Ministry should convey to both Moscow and Washington that the US’ and Norway’s interests in terms of fresh American sanctions do not coincide.
“The [US] sanctions can lead to disrupting the construction of the planned pipelines. That will hit the European oil and gas sector, and the US could potentially stand to gain from that. The fresh sanctions impose restrictions on economic cooperation with Russia, and this could have direct consequences for Norwegian companies cooperating with their Russian counterparts in the oil and gas sphere.”