Energy News Beat
EU foreign ministers on Monday agreed in principle to begin gradually easing sanctions on Syria to support economic recovery after the ouster of Bashar al-Assad.
EU member states had begun reassessing their sanctions regime as Syria’s new leadership, the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), lobbied to have them lifted to improve the war-torn country’s economic situation.
Monday’s ‘roadmap’, which will need to be further developed in the coming weeks, includes the lifting of sanctions on the energy and transport sectors and key financial institutions.
“While we aim to move fast, the lifting of sanctions can be reversed if wrong steps are taken,” the EU’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, said after the decision.
It was not immediately clear following Kallas’s comments, however, in which order the measures would be lifted.
Some member states had been hesitant to move forward with lifting sanctions on financial institutions as the initial step, EU diplomats said.
At the same time, many EU countries have been in favour of adopting a gradual and reversible approach to keep leverage on Damascus’ new leaders, making any easing conditional on how the new Syrian government will rule.
Syria has been subject to sweeping EU sanctions following the outbreak of civil war in 2011, which targeted both individuals and economic sectors. Measures included a ban on Syrian oil exports and restrictions on access to global financial channels.
The country’s new de facto leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, and his HTS group will remain under EU sanctions, and there are so far no plans to lift them, EU diplomats said.
“What we are not relieving, of course, is anything related to arms, and everything that we are still concerned about,” Kallas said.
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