🔵 EU sanctions chief braces for US volte-face

I’m Eddy Wax, with Nicoletta Ionta, in Brussels.
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In today’s edition:
- The EU’s sanctions envoy prepares to go it alone
- Germany has a new ambassador to the EU
- The European Parliament recruitment battle

Sanctions chief’s lonely crusade: High up in the European Commission’s Berlaymont headquarters, the EU’s top sanctions envoy is preparing to go it alone against Russia.
“If the Americans were to decide not to continue with additional sanctions, which I hope they won't, but if they were, I think there would still be huge value in the EU continuing with our sanctions because I believe they have a substantial impact,” David O'Sullivan - a former EU ambassador in Washington - told me and Thomas Moller-Nielsen in an exclusive interview.
“Our sanctions are economically more significant for Russia,” said the top civil servant, whose job it is to ensure the effectiveness of EU sanctions worldwide.
For years during the Biden administration, the Commission and the White House closely coordinated their Russia sanctions. But six months into the new Trump era, O’Sullivan still doesn’t have a US counterpart. Gone then are the joint trips to enforce sanctions around the world (though O’Sullivan denied that is having a material impact.)
Getting the Americans to agree to more sanctions on Russia is proving much harder.
Ursula von der Leyen and Kaja Kallas proposed a new raft of EU sanctions on Russia on Tuesday. This 18th package since Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine includes a transaction ban on the Nord Stream gas pipeline and a lowering of the G7 oil price cap from $60 per barrel to $45, a measure designed to starve the Russian economy of revenue.
O’Sullivan said that preference would be agreeing the new price cap with the US and the rest of the G7 at a meeting in Canada this weekend; but if the Americans don't agree, "we will have to decide whether we go ahead anyway”.
O’Sullivan struck a surprisingly pessimistic tone about a much-hyped American bill from Republican Senator Lindsey Graham that could drastically up the ante on Moscow. Even von der Leyen has welcomed – albeit cautiously – Graham’s plan, which would slap 500% tariffs on all countries that buy Russian oil.
But O’Sullivan said “I don't think that anything in that bill is going to change the position of India or China or anywhere else.” And he added, “We've already seen in the case of China, the hiking up of tariffs has led to hiking up of other tariffs."
The increasing isolation of the EU on Russia sanctions, is not dampening O’Sullivan’s determination. “It's the cumulative impact of all the sanctions that we've been putting on, which is crushing the Russian economy ... All the key indicators in the Russian economy are flashing red."

“We all have an obligation to kind of dispel some of the myths about living in Brussels” - Parliament’s HR Director General Ellen Robson.

Berlin’s EU budget fixer heads back to Brussels. Thomas Ossowski, an experienced diplomat who has previously been posted to Brussels, has been selected as Germany’s new ambassador to the EU, Euractiv has learned. Read more.

Legal fight over EU recruitment: In a little reported development, Italy, Spain, France and Belgium are waging a legal battle against the European Parliament over its decision to limit fresh recruitment drives to certain nationalities only. In a bid to create a fairer spread of EU nationalities in its administration, the Parliament launched separate pushes to hire Austrian, Luxembourgish, Cypriot and Dutch nationals, the least well represented countries in Parliament’s staff.
Our kind of meritocracy: At stake are just a few hundred spots on a list from which the Parliament will draw future candidates. But Spain and Italy went to court arguing that the EU assembly is breaching the sacrosanct principle of hiring on merit alone. If the Parliament wins it could allow the Commission to adopt the same direct approach.
“We simply think that the soft measures that we have been trying to make work for the last 15 years don’t work,” said Parliament’s HR chief Ellen Robson at a conference Tuesday. “We’re confident that we’ll win the court cases.” Over a dozen countries are backing the Parliament, at the Court of Justice. Dutch diplomat Tristan Schyns said: “I find it hard to understand that a purely merit based system would lead to a system where you would simply have less Nordic people ... Dutch ... Czech, Portuguese, Luxembourgish, Irish.”
Told you so: The European Commission revised its list of high-risk countries for financial crime on Tuesday, officially removing the United Arab Emirates, confirming earlier reports by Euractiv. Algeria, Angola, Côte d’Ivoire, Kenya, Laos, Lebanon, Monaco, Namibia, Nepal, and Venezuela were added to the high-risk list, which obligates EU entities to more closely scrutinise financial transactions.
Hungary joins ECHR rethink: Hungary has joined a Denmark-Italy initiative – first reported by Euractiv – calling for a political debate over how the European Court of Human Rights interprets the European Convention on Human Rights. The current scenario “makes it almost impossible to expel illegal migrants who committed serious crimes”, Hungary’s EU affairs minister, János Bóka, wrote on X. “This must stop!”

POLAND
Tusk faces confidence vote as coalition tensions rise. Donald Tusk’s government faces a pivotal vote of confidence in parliament today - a move that could potentially trigger early elections and bring an end to the current ruling coalition’s hold on power. Read more.
SPAIN
Leaked Brussels opinion roils Spanish politics. The European Commission raised rule of law concerns over Spain’s amnesty law for Catalan separatists in a draft non-binding opinion leaked to the Spanish press on Tuesday. Read more.
GERMANY
Right-wing extremist offences in Germany nearly double. The number of offences with a right-wing extremist background rose by 47.4% to 37,835, including 1,281 acts of violence, last year, according to an annual report on extremism, presented by the German Interior Ministry and the domestic secret service on Tuesday. The number of those considered right-wing extremists also rose by around 23% to 50,250, making it the most common form of extremism.
ITALY
Italy's EU recovery fund risk. Experts warn weak oversight of Italy’s €200 billion windfall under the EU’s post-COVID recovery fund is leaving the door open to waste, corruption, and, in some cases, mafia infiltration. Read more.
AUSTRIA
School shooting. A former student has killed 10 people and himself in a shooting that took place at a secondary school in Graz, south-eastern Austria. Read more.

India’s foreign minister told Euractiv this week that EU countries who say India should be more critical of Russia over the war in Ukraine need a history lesson, notably over Kashmir. Read more.
Denmark will consider banning social media for kids under 15 years old, Danish Digital Minister Caroline Stage Olsen told Euractiv in an exclusive interview. Read more. (French President Emmanuel Macron said he’s giving a few months for an EU-wide push to do the same, otherwise France will do so itself.)
Some 50,000 wannabe Eurocrats had their hopes dashed as the Commission yet again pushed back a much-anticipated test. Read more.
One year after elections, the Brussels region is still without a government – an unprecedented hold-up that is driving the city's finances into the wall. Read more.
After announcing that Paris would formally recognise Palestine as an independent state later this month at an international conference, the Élysée now seems to be backpedalling under pressure from Tel Aviv and Israel's allies. Read more.

The job that never was: The Commission quietly buried its plan to appoint an SME envoy, according to minutes from a March meeting of commissioners. Last year Ursula von der Leyen backtracked after outrage when she put up her party colleague Markus Pieper for the role. She promised to appoint a new person after last year’s EU election. But that job post was recently “suppressed."
Seen something amusing, interesting, or downright strange in Brussels? Send tips.

Reporters: Aneta Zachová, Aleksandra Krzysztoszek, Alessia Peretti, Orlando Whitehead, Nick Alipour, Inés Fernández-Pontes, Thomas Moeller-Nielsen,

Editors: Vince Chadwick and Sofia Mandilara.