Donald Trump has utterly dominated the European news cycle since returning to the White House – and the EU's sanctions policy is likely to follow suit.

On Tuesday, Moscow demanded the removal of sanctions on Rosselkhozbank and other Russian financial institutions as a condition for agreeing to a US-brokered ceasefire with Ukraine in the Black Sea.

As analysts and Western officials quickly pointed out, the Kremlin’s key demand – reconnecting Russian banks to SWIFT, the financial messaging system from which they were excluded following the 2022 invasion – is one that only the EU, and not the US, can ultimately fulfil.

In particular, they noted that the banks’ readmission to the Belgium-based network would require changes to the EU’s own restrictive measures on Moscow, which must be unanimously approved by member states and renewed every six months.

But on Wednesday, the EU went well beyond merely reaffirming its jurisdiction over its sanctions policy.

“The end of the Russian unprovoked and unjustified aggression in Ukraine and unconditional withdrawal of all Russian military forces from the entire territory of Ukraine would be one of the main preconditions to amend or lift sanctions,” said a Commission spokesperson.

Taken literally, this statement – echoed by some EU leaders on Thursday – implies that the EU’s sanctions will remain in force until Russia withdraws not just from territory seized since 2022, but also from Crimea, the strategic peninsula it annexed eight years earlier.

However, Kyiv is overwhelmingly unlikely to regain control of Crimea anytime soon.

“Nobody believes that Ukraine is going to get back Crimea,” former Commission President José Manuel Barroso said last year. “That's the reality.”

The EU's claim that the sanctions should remain in place indefinitely may be morally defensible. It may also serve as a useful opening gambit before peace negotiations with Moscow are underway.

The problem, though, is that it is also manifestly false. Indeed, it is contradicted by the fact that, as the Commission spokesperson also noted, “all decisions on sanctions are taken unanimously by member states in the Council.”

But if decisions on sanctions require member states’ unanimous approval (and they do), it cannot be true that Russia’s withdrawal from all of Ukraine is “one of the main preconditions” for removing sanctions.

Rather, the real precondition is that (at least) one member state – Hungary being the most likely candidate – refuses to roll them over when they come up for extension at the end of July (or, perhaps, at a later date).

At the very least, it is far more likely that Hungary will refuse to renew the sanctions before Russia relinquishes control of Crimea.

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US will need EU consent to lift any Russia sanctions in order to make Black Sea ceasefire deal work. “SWIFT cannot connect Russian banks to the network unless the EU changes its sanctions legislation,” said Janis Kluge, senior associate at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs. However, analysts noted that the US could reopen corresponding accounts in the US for Russian banks under American jurisdiction without EU approval. Read more.

Russian assets frozen in the EU should be used to pay war reparations to Ukraine, says European Council president. António Costa said on Tuesday that it’s “important to protect these assets” during peace negotiations with Russia “to ensure that in the future they will be used to pay the repairments [sic] of war." Costa’s comments contradicted Belgium’s recent warning that the funds’ confiscation would constitute “an act of war." Read more.

EU trade chief travels to Beijing and Washington to avert global trade war. Maroš Šefčovič met his American counterparts in Washington on Tuesday before travelling to Beijing on Thursday for talks with Chinese officials. The veteran commissioner’s globe-trotting tour came just days before Trump is due to impose his much-vaunted “reciprocal tariffs” on 2 April. The US trip failed to yield tangible results, while the trip to China will conclude tomorrow. Read our curtain raiser here. 

Manufacturing output rises in Germany for the first time in two years ahead of fresh US tariffs. Germany’s manufacturing output surged from 48.9 in February to 52.1 in March: the first time since 2023 that the index has shot past the 50-point mark separating growth from contraction. Analysts said the increase could be linked to the imminent imposition of Trump’s “reciprocal tariffs” on 2 April. Read more.