Germany could face severe consequences should Russia be excluded from the Swift system.
(Photo: dpa)
Berlin The designated CDU chairman Friedrich Merz has warned against excluding Russia from the international banking payment system Swift. “Questioning Swift could be the atomic bomb for the capital markets and also for goods and service relations,” he told the German Press Agency in Berlin shortly before Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock (Greens) traveled to Ukraine and Russia this Monday and Tuesday. “We should leave Swift untouched.”
“I would see massive economic setbacks for our economies as well if something like this happened. It would hit Russia. But we would do ourselves considerable harm” as a strong export nation, warned Merz. He fears major repercussions not only on European-Russian trade in services and goods, but also on global trade.
Swift is the system for processing international money transactions for goods and services. Excluding Moscow “would basically break the backbone of this international payment system.”
Baerbock wants to meet with President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba in the Ukrainian capital Kiev on Monday. Consultations with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov are planned in Moscow on Tuesday.
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Russia is demanding that Ukraine and Georgia not be admitted to NATO and that US troops and weapons be reduced in Europe. NATO rejects that. The West is demanding the withdrawal of Russian troops from the border with Ukraine and is threatening massive sanctions if Russia invades Ukraine.
Merz called Ukraine’s desire for arms deliveries legitimate. “The country is under massive threat, just from the deployment of troops on its eastern border. And in that respect I can understand the wish very well.” But the answer should be European.
Baerbock will visit Russia next week. The agenda includes talks about the conflict with Ukraine.
(Photo: imago images/photothek)
“It is important that the European Union speaks with one voice here.” Before there is a commitment or agreements from the federal government, he wants to know: “Is there a common European position here? Everything that we do together in Europe can convince, and if necessary, persuade Russia to give in and give in.”
In the dispute over the Russian-German Nord Stream 2 pipeline, through which Russian natural gas is to be transported bypassing Ukraine, Germany “avoidably maneuvered itself into it – by repeatedly and nevertheless falsely claiming that this was an exclusively private economic project of the energy industry.
As we all know, there is nothing private and apolitical about the project,” said Merz. “There is hardly a more political project in the energy industry in the world than this pipeline. So please, Mr. Chancellor, stop telling us this story,” he said in the direction of SPD Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
The question of whether the pipeline will go into operation or not is a legal question between the consortium and the EU Commission, said Merz. “Politically, I would think it would be right if Nord Stream 2 is already completed and all these mistakes have been made on the way there, to put the pipeline into operation.” But only if the Russians oppose Poland and the Ukraine fully met their gas delivery obligations. One should not “shake hands to blackmail Poland and Ukraine” through the pipeline.
Merz is to be elected CDU chairman at a digital party conference on January 22nd. In December, the party members had voted him by a large majority to succeed party leader Armin Laschet.
More: Baerbock’s demarcation from Scholz – Nord Stream 2 characterizes the Secretary of State’s US visit