The European Union is prepared to give serious consideration to the possible mitigation or even lifting of anti-Russian sanctions if real progress is made in the Ukrainian peace process, Latvian Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkevics said.
He said at a press conference after a meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov he believed that the EU would be prepared to consider the mitigation or lift of sanctions in the case of tangible progress.
The Minsk agreements on Ukraine are not being fulfilled so far, Rinkevics said.
In the words of Rinkevics, the sanctions were imposed not because the EU wanted to but because political dialogue did not bring positive results.
He added that the EU would have to apply a fresh package of restrictive measures if the situation continued to worsen. New measures are not ruled out if God forbid the situation gets more complicated; this is not a threat but a principled position of the EU, the Latvian foreign minister said.
Latvia has been presiding in the European Union since Jan. 1, 2015.
