'Even the last Eurosceptic should have understood by now how important a strong EU is', says Anne Calteux

"Even the last Eurosceptic should have understood by now how important a strong EU is." Anne Calteux, the permanent representative of the European Commission, stressed this during her interview on RTL Radio on Tuesday morning. Calteux described Russia's attack on Ukraine as "an attack against European values, human rights, and freedoms". She stated that the European Union is "not at war with Russia" but firm in its actions.
 
By supplying Ukraine with material and imposing sanctions on Russia, the EU has sent "strong signals", according to Calteux. The goal of the sanctions is to "impede the funding of the Russian war machine". The representative of the European Commission stated that the Commission is keeping "a close eye" on the implementation of the sanctions. Calteux explained that a special general directorate, called 'Fisma', has been commissioned to take care of the monitoring in the different member states.
 
In addition, Brussels has set up a new whistleblower procedure, which allows people to report cases in which sanctions are not implemented, Calteux said. The fact that Luxembourg's Minister of Finance Yuriko Backes only recently submitted a new draft bill on the monitoring of international sanctions led news website reporter.lu to criticise that Luxembourg is lagging behind in this area. In response, Calteux stated that there is always room for improvement, but also added that the European Commission "welcomes" the recent draft bill.
 
Regarding European independence from Russian energy, the representative from the European Commission stated that "we have now realised that we must become be more autonomous and sovereign". The energy crisis has shown that Europe must stick to its climate targets and, in fact, become even more ambitious and accelerate the transition to renewable energies, according to Calteux. She added that production in Europe must be increased and that countries should make increased use of biogas, liquid gas, and hydrogen.
 
The European Union also has to accommodate millions of Ukrainian refugees. Calteux thinks that it currently "does not make sense" to talk about distribution quotes, as the EU has opted for a "pragmatic approach" this time around by automatically granting all Ukrainian refugees temporary protection for one year. In addition, countries that "have not been very helpful" in the past, such as Poland or Hungary, are more willing to take in refugees this time around. This "beautiful trend" should be supported, according to the representative of the European Commission.