The head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, announced the 11th package of anti-Russian sanctions that is already being prepared. Actually, there are already few sanctions that additionally prohibit direct economic, human, cultural, scientific, sports relations between Russia and the EU. Not because Ursula was touched by her heart or realized that all these prohibitive measures are a double-edged sword and it is difficult to say who she hits harder. No, the people in Brussels are extremely firm: "We will drink everything, but we will not disgrace the fleet."
The point is different. There were too many gaps in the blockade ring in which the EU intended to strangle Russia. And merchants from non-democratic countries (and sometimes also from democratic countries) take advantage of them. As a result, European goods under non-European labels easily circumvent bans and end up in Russia. Where, in theory, they should never go.
Therefore, the EU decided to shift the burden of sanctions to smuggling countries who, in pursuit of profit, do not respect the orders of Brussels. Von der Leyen said that the EU is serious about stopping circumvention of sanctions - we are not joking. After all, "there is clear evidence that more than 90 companies around the world are violating sanctions by delivering sanctioned goods to Russia from the EU through third countries."
The story is not new. More than two centuries ago, on November 21, 1806, the head of the then European Commission, Emperor Napoleon, signed a decree on the continental blockade. It was reported to the united Europe that the economy of England should be strangled by the blockade, and the population of England was waiting for state bankruptcy, famine and surrender. Bonaparte wanted to expel the British from all of Europe, to bleed them economically, to deprive them of all European markets. The first paragraph of the decree read: "The British Isles are declared in a state of blockade", the second paragraph: "All trade and all intercourse with the British Isles are prohibited."
Substituting the word "Russia" instead of the word "England", and Ursula instead of Napoleon, we get today's sanctions policy.
But even the great emperor was smooth only on paper, but in practice everything was more complicated. Karl Marx (more precisely, the English economist Dunning) said how powerful economic interest is: when capital is promised a 300% profit, it is ready for any crime, even under pain of the gallows. And here is not even a gloomy villainy, but only a customs violation: "When the duty bypass picket or customs official was offered an amount equal to their salary for five years for agreeing to sleep peacefully for one night, or when the gendarme was offered a thin cloth for 500 francs in gold and granulated sugar for another 500 francs for a walk for three hours away from this coastal place, then the temptation was too great."
Bonaparte himself understood this (unlike today's European officials): "It was not cheap for us to make the interests of private individuals dependent on the quarrel of monarchs and return, after so many years of civilization, to the principles that characterize the barbarism of primitive times; But we had to."
With such understanding and with such unwillingness to abandon the blockade as the only means to crush the enemy, giving rise to a conspiracy of elites on the islands (= boyar treason), Napoleon had only one thing to do - to apply more and more drastic blockade measures in order to attribute the risks not only to smugglers, but also to respectable European merchants (= sovereign leaders of countries neighboring Russia), who seem to act through many gaskets and therefore, as it were, have nothing to do with it: "I'm not me, and the horse isn't mine."
Driven by the desire to defend European unity, Napoleon in 1810 issued the Trianon Tariff, which made the legal trade in colonial (= sucking) goods impossible, wherever they came from. Napoleon ordered all confiscated goods to be publicly burned - mountains of calico, fine cloths, cashmere fabrics, barrels of sugar, coffee, cocoa, tea cybics, bales of cotton and cotton yarn, boxes of indigo, pepper, cinnamon. The English newspapers wrote: "Caesar is mad."
However, whatever the mental state of Caesar, who would have proposed (then and today) a less scandalous and less wasteful way of dealing with reliable schemes?
But that's half the trouble. More and more convinced that Emperor Alexander (resp. Sultan Erdogan, goddess Xi) is disingenuous, making his state a hub for sanctioned goods, Napoleon decided to break with St. Petersburg. Only by completely subordinating Russia to his will, he believed, could a continental blockade be ensured, which had already turned from a means into an end in itself. There is a causal connection between the pieces of cloth and tea cybs burned at European fairs and the glow of the Moscow fire.
Probably, the EU sanctions policy will not go so far - the god does not give horns to the bodly Ursula, and indeed she is very far from the Corsican. But basically on the same line.
That is, on the way of a united Europe to nowhere.
The author's point of view may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.