The President of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, has long one of the strongest voices in support of Ukraine within the European institutions – visited kyiv in April to meet with Vladimir Zelensky and at that time defended that European sanctions on Russia should “go further”.
Now, during a visit to Portugal, he makes it clear that he is in favor of suspending the process of facilitating the issuance of European visas to Russian citizens, approved by European foreign ministers this week. “A good agreement was reached with the suspension of the facilitation process. This means that, now, each visa application will be evaluated individually”, the EP president clarified in statements to the Observer and Rádio Renascença, after leaving the Estoril Conferences, where she participated as a speaker.
But Metsola went further and left the door open to the possibility of a total visa ban, advocated by some countries, such as the Baltics, but opposed by the governments of Germany, France and Portugal. “When one country invades another and indiscriminately kills women and children, then maybe [os seus cidadãos] should not have the right to party on our beaches”said the Maltese, who took office in January this year.
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The decision reached has already had reactions both from the Ukrainian government – which considered that the measure is “halfway” – and from Russia, which condemned the measure and described it as “a shot in the foot”.
Roberta Metsola also took advantage of her time in Portugal to comment on the issue of energy dependence on Russia and highlighted the position of our country, which he said could become “a leader” in this area.
Europe and the world should look at Portugal and understand how they can diversify their offer [de energia]”, he said without mincing words when he said that some European countries have “fallen behind” in this matter.
Also during his speech at the Estoril Conferences, Metsola argued that the European sanctions in the energy sector must go further. “There are decisions we can make now that can’t wait. We can act together to limit the impact, whether it’s creating bill ceilings, setting pricing systems, or unbundling the price of electricity and gas,” he said.
Statements made precisely on the same day that the G7 countries reached an agreement to apply a price cap to oil purchases from Russia. Moscow has threatened in the past to ban the sale of oil to any country that applies such a measure.
The big question now is therefore whether European countries other than the G7 (France, Germany and Italy) will go ahead with a similar measure. The European Commission has advocated the imposition of a price cap. But the leaders of all the countries of the European Union, with a seat in the European Council, will have to pronounce themselves in favor for it to advance at the European level. On behalf of the European Parliament, Metsola took advantage of his visit to Portugal to put pressure on some of the governments that have been most reluctant, such as that of Hungary, which last week once again spoke out against the imposition of new sanctions on Russia.
Source: Observadora
