Europe countries reject russian sanctions and demand pragmatic carve out

6 EU countries just blew a massive hold in the latest anti-Russia sanctions package. Or she think they blocked it outright. This is getting quite interesting because Germany, Portugal, France, Italy, Austria, Greece, they've started to put their own economies first. So, you know, this ideology that I've been talking about that's just been infected with the brains of the politicians in Europe. But there's been a bit of pushback. It had to happen sooner or later. I think this is the first visible sign of pushback from European, I think it's economies. I think European economies have had enough and they're like, guys, we can't do this. This is stupid. This is not going to work well for us. We need to figure this out. So, I think that's what's happening right now. I'll take you in a bit more detail. Let's figure this out. And why? Because our bills, your bills, if you're in Europe, if you're not in Europe, you probably don't care so much, but you will. You're eventually your care. But if you're in Europe, well, your energy bills, you've probably felt it already. I felt it. I absolutely felt it. When you're filling up the car with petrol or when you're paying for your gas bill at the end of the month or your electricity bill, it was like, what? How can that be right? You got to go and check the bill. You got to check the meter. Is that right? Food prices, but also job security because there's a lot of increasing unemployment right across the European Union right now. So, that's why it really matters if you're in the EU. But if you're not fully isolated from this because when an economy decides of the European Union starts to decline, it impacts everybody. That's why, so today, I'm breaking down exactly what each country is fighting for and why, well, at least in my opinion, why this is the start of a much bigger collapse and what Russia might do. To Europe, if Europe tries to reverse course. I think this last bit here is quite interesting because it gives us some insight into the psychology of, at least what I think the psychology of Russia might be. So, a little bit of context first, right? So, the EU has layered sanction after sanction on Russia since February 2022. The goal was to cripple Russia's wall machine by cutting revenue and cutting technology and practice the cost of falling heavily on the shoulders of Europe, higher energy prices, industrial decline and lost export markets. Russia, meanwhile, adapted by selling more to China and selling more to India and to others through the shadow fleet and with parallel import. So, they just got on with it, they're like, whatever, we've got to make money. So, we'll just change our market structure and we'll sell to other parties. And there's always a willing buy-around there, especially for energy. They call it a fungible goods, it doesn't matter where in the world your tanker full of cruders, you'll be able to sell it. So, and that's true, right? That's true. If you've got a tanker full of crude oil and you front up somewhere and you say, look, I've got this tanker full of crude oil, just out here in the port. Would you like to buy it off me? There'll be lots of people. I mean, it depends on the price, of course, but if you've got a good price, there will be people lining up to buy that crude and to resell it to a refinery or to some other processor because that's the nature of crude. So, yeah. So, after years of basically having to suck up the pain right through the war since February 2022, several member states are now pushing back their openly demanding carve-outs, which means they're not saying, okay, you can't do the sanctions, stop that. We're not going to have that anymore. You have to stop it as a country. They're not saying that, they're saying, right, go ahead with your crazy stuff, but we want you to carve us out of this discussion. We want to still be able to trade with Russia because we have to. We're getting absolutely sold and so, you want to do your ideological political thing? Fine, that's okay with us, but don't evolve us. Have a specific carve-out for our companies. Classic national interest politics. Governments answer to their own voters and then industries first. Yeah, so the catalyst, the six countries demand. So, Germany and Portugal, what are they doing? Yeah, so these guys are fighting to protect our number one is food. Food is critical. Critical market for Germany and Portugal, but also seafood processing. Massive. It is absolutely massive. So, they would be impacted by a ban on Russian seafood imports. A full ban would, I mean, it would cripple the industry because they rely so heavily, heavily on imports of fish products, food products from Russia. They rely on this. They can't do their thing. They can't process the wheat. They can't process the corn. They can't process the fish into, you know, tin the fish or flour for bread or whatever it is. They do the processing. That's their part of the chain. And if you don't have access to those raw materials, your budget, you've got no chain, you've got no market, you can't employ people. And for every factory that goes down, there's an entire support chain that sits around it. And that chain employs a lot of people. So, these two countries, you know, Germany and Portugal are like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Yes, you can do this, but no, you can't do it for our, whatever, our sector. France and Italy are also pushing back on tighter visa restrictions, get this tighter visa restrictions for high end tourism. I mean, that is just what a bunch of sneaky, sneaky buggers. France and Italy, I mean, that is so, I don't know what to say. They're basically saying, look, we'll set aside our principles and ideology around the whole Ukraine, Russia thing. We'll set that aside for rich Russians that want to come and spend a big load of money in casinos and in fancy hotels in Paris and in Milan. Can you get it? Can you see this? It's like, what? Your cheeky bastards, that's basically, that is, yes capitalism, right? That is capitalism right there. That is enterprise saying, look, you know, keep your ideology, keep that to yourself. We're not interested in that. You want to do that fine, but cover us out of it. We're not involved in that. Greece, another one. So, Greece is basically trying to water down measures against what's Greece famous for? It's famous for shipping. A lot of Greek shipping magnates. They sell that example with crude. That's often a ship that's owned by and run by some Greek magnate, which is like another word for oligarch. In the west, we accuse the Russians of having oligarchs. So, it's a Russian oligarch. It's some sort of Ukrainian oligarch with some big boat in the harbor. Well, in Greece they call them magnates. It's a much nicer word in my view. A shipping magnate. Oh, that sounds pretty good for. It must be a like an accomplished sort of person. They've done a good job of working hard and they're a shipping magnate. But if you're an oligarch, oh no, that's bad. So, yeah, the interesting terminology that's used, but Greece are basically saying, yeah, yeah, do your ideology better really have much interest in that. But you have to put a carve out in there for shipping. This is two Brussels. This is basically the Brussels. They're all going to Brussels saying, yeah, we're kind of like, we understand what you're doing with this thing and the thing. And we understand your hate Putin and your hate all the Russians and you want them all dead. We're okay with that. We don't really have a dog in the fight personally. But all the stuff that you're doing is an impact on our bread and butter. And that means we're going to have to fire a lot of people. And we're not going to make any money. And we're probably not going to be magnates anymore. Or, you know, rich people and wherever. And we don't like that. We really don't like that. And we pay a lot of the bills around here. So, sort of your shit out Brussels. That's what I was saying. Yeah, there's one more. And it's Austria. So, Austria got a different issue. Yeah, what's Austria really famous for? People banking money, a lot of money in Austria. They are demanding the unfreezing of unbelievable, unbelievable, they have hypocrisy. Austria is demanding the unfreezing of assets, frozen assets, Russian frozen assets to rescue. A major bank that's got a lot of Russian exposure. See what happens when you do this crazy stuff? It ends up blowing up in your face. And that's what's happened to Brussels and to the stupid. And then honestly, this is a one-toned generation-owned goal. That's what's just happened with all these sanctions packages. Not just to the USA, because you've now got bricks that have been cut off from Swift. So, what you've done is you've blown up Swift. Swift is only used by the West now. You can pretty much only use it for West and partner to West and partner trade. So, you've cut off at least half of the global economy, probably like 60%. You've definitely cut off about 80% of the world's population. They're not using Swift anymore. They used to be dependent on Swift. And you came out with all your crazy stuff, Blinken, Sullivan, Biden, Newland, all your crazies from the Democrats side of the USA. So, with all their stupid bloody sanctions, they have blown the world up. They've stripped it upside down. And the problem is, you can't tip it back up. It's a one-way ticket. And that's what we're seeing here. In my humble opinion, that's what we're seeing with these countries. These countries are now inside the European Union. They're inside the tent. And even they are saying, boy, I mean, this is stupid. This is bad. Bad for business. It's bad for jobs. It's bad for inflation. It's bad for the cost of living. It's bad for GDP. It's bad for economic future. It is bad for Europe. It's bad for the USA. It's bad for everybody. This is bad shit. It's a really bad. Yeah, so basically private sector, lobbying like mad, telling Brussels, pull your head in or else. And I think there is an or else tacked on at the back there. It's kind of like a failed threat. It's a bit passive-aggressive, but I think it is. I really do. I think it's a, you kind of have to do what we're saying or else. Because they have a lot of power, right? Economies don't just run by themselves. They run by large business. You know, small-medium, but large business is doing a lot of trade, a lot of revenue, a lot of employees, a lot of people that are employed and get their prosperity from. You know, these centers of activity. Yeah, but this is just the start. I think it's just the start. These are the first, you know, handful of companies that have pushed back and that are saying to Brussels, sort yourselves out. You've run at a time. You've done your dough. We're all bugged. You've got to wind all this back. Yeah. So once you see this, you know, you see a handful of countries like this actually pulling back. You know, I mean, if Germany can't protect its seafood, they're bugged, right? But if they can, if these people, if they succeed and it looks like they are, looks like they've succeeded or succeeding in getting these accommodations, when they do. You think it's going to stop with seafood? No. This will embolden other industries like steel. I mean, think about steel. And aluminum, aluminum, alloys. These are massive industries. Absolutely massive industries in Germany. Chemicals, BASF, agriculture, I mean, fertilizer. You know, Germany alone is a massive industry. It's huge. And if you think, if the seafood people manage to get an accommodation, the rest will be dumping that door down. I mean, it'll just be a tsunami of the private sector of capitalism being in the door down. And that really represents pragmatism, in my view, because money talks and bullshit walks. Basically, money talks at the end of the day. And these companies that are all sitting behind the first one, the first one was around seafood, right? And if that lands, if that lands, the rest will be lining up front, Italy. These guys have opened up the door. There's a little crack. Spain and the others will follow very quickly. They'll push that door open. And before you know it, there's ban on any Russian flights across the European Union. That'll be gone. That'll be gone. I wonder how quickly all these sanctions will fall away. Yeah, the same with Austria, right? We've done freezing the bank assets. If Austria can do it, why can't the others? Of course they can. Of course they can. There's over 300. Last time I checked was a two years ago. It was over 300 billion. It was a two year. A year or at least a year ago it was over 300 billion in assets that were frozen. Compounding. These assets were compounding in growth. These are Russian assets, you know. So this is how these sanctions regimes, which sound all well and good. We've really sanctioned package number three. We've really sanctioned package number four. We've done everybody two months. Oh, we've done another sanctioned package. That's all they can do. And all they're doing is they're causing themselves harm. That's terrible. Of course, they're causing us basically. They're hurting us. They're causing us harm. That's really shit. I don't like that at all. Yeah, so private sector, private sector. This is capitalism working. The private sector pragmatism versus idealism. Ideological losers basically. This is the pragmatists, the capitalists, they're coming out and they want their come-upons. They want their revenge because a lot of money is going down the toilet. Thanks to these bloody ideologues and Brussels, so yeah, yeah, I mean we could be a slippery slope here. I could happen quite quickly. We'll see. Now, let's go and have a bit of a look forward. So Europe is learning the hard way that sanctions have real costs. They do. And limited strategic impact. True. It's had bugger all impact on Russia. It's had an impact on Russians. Don't get it wrong. The Russia GDP has not really been impacted. In fact, it's gone up. It's crazy. I didn't expect that. And the thing is though, Russians themselves have had to bloody buy an iPhone on the black market. They've had to have their holiday in Asia, down in Vietnam, or over in Thailand, or they'll go down to Bali, or they can't go to Europe. They used to go and spend money in Brussels, or they'd go to Marbaya in Spain. A lot of Russians down there. They love it down there and they spend a shit mode down in Spain. Spain's able to recover because a lot of other people want to come in from Dubai now. Dubai is another location. You see a lot of Russians. If you're a Russian bloke, don't go to the beach in Dubai and wear your little budget smugglers, you know the little speedos. Bro, don't do that. There's no need. You don't need to do that. And the ladies too, those high viz costumes that you're wear. Look, there's different styles and I appreciate that. And look all power to Europe. If your whole thing is the man Kenny, then I mean, that's fine. But there's other people who conduct themselves on the beach down at Jamira Beach. There's just a different way of doing things. And maybe you're open your mind to that sort of thing. They're pretty shocking. It's like, oh bro, there's nothing to hide. You're not hiding anything. You're letting it all hang out. It's like, yeah, pretty confronting on Jamira Beach in Dubai. But my point was, you got all these stupid sanctions and you got these. The Russians have to pay the price themselves because they can't travel. They can't fly to the places they like to go and spend money. They can't go and holiday in the places they want to go. They can't go and catch up with family. They can't go and do work stuff. It's very difficult for them to travel now between what was formally a massive market where a lot of Russians had business interests and they had to close out those interests. So huge impact on Russians, not a big impact on Russia. In my opinion too. If you think I'm wrong, comment down below. So national economic interests and private sector lobbying are proving to be much, much stronger than Brussels unity. Brussels being able to hold it together versus the private sector of the European Union. You're not going to win that battle. You're not going to win. They've got more lobbying power than you can imagine. And that's what's coming for them. I think that's what's, that's they've come up unspacically. So the House of Cards is beginning to collapse. I think it's the beginning of the end of the sanctions on Russia. We'll see. Hold me to account. So even if Europe reverses all sanctions back to February 2022. 26 sanctions backages. Russia, Russia might not welcome these trade lines. Moscow has built, as I'm saying, a built basically alternatives. They've got new markets now. They sell crude instead of selling it to Europe. They sell it to India. And India refines it. Then sells it to Europe. It takes a cut. So they've lost the refining revenue. But they've also lost price control. They basically are price takers, not price makers. But also China. China has been a massive, a huge importer of energy from Russia. They've building pipelines between, because you've got to remember, like here's Russia, and here's China, and they're connected. There's a line between them. There's a river basically. You can catch the ferry across from Russia to China. It's like a couple of bucks and takes about three minutes. But look, what I'm saying is it's built alternatives to Europe. And Europe might say, look, we've decided Russia that we don't hate you after all. We're not going to kill you anymore. And we've decided to remove all the sanctions. So we'd like you to sell us oil again. Will you sell us oil? I'm just thinking, look, it might just be smarter for Russia. They might think, forget about what I think. They might just think, look, we've now got what we think are reliable partners. We thought we had a reliable partner in Europe. It works out they were not reliable at all. And so, yeah, we've now got, I mean India is pretty reliable. They buy our stuff. No problems at all. Turkey, they buy our stuff. No problems at all. China, they buy our stuff. They just want more. What more? It's much stricken killer. It's getting more. So maybe, maybe the smarter path for Russia is pragmatic realism. And maybe that just means they don't. Even if we, if we in Europe, if the collective we, the West and we, if we say, well, chill, we're sorry about that. But the whole thing was a mess. Well, throw these politicians out, right? Some new politicians will come in to France, you know, lapinal coming. And the right wing party, I've just forgotten their name in Germany. How many of you know what they call, they will come in. And the same in Italy, Spain. I think Spain already, they're actually already in that sort of domain. So I think Spain would easily sort of want back the sanctions that they could. The Nordic countries, I think, like Sweden, Norway, Denmark. Yeah, there are probably a bit more complicated. The Baltic countries, they are bigger. They're in it. They're in the tank for, let's go and kill as many Russians as possible. Poland, I'm not sure. I think Poland have had a real shock from the NACIs in Ukraine. They had a big, a big problem about six weeks ago. And I'll have to do a video on it. It's a bit complicated, but basically the polls are like we are not supporting Ukraine. We cannot support them. These people killed our ancestors. They butchered them. So no, no, we've flipped absolutely, we've flipped around. And then you've got, you know, like Romania, or in place of Moldova, in places like that, Hungary. And I've always been a bit, you know, a bit of a featsit or so. I think there could be an interesting sort of process where Brussels representing Europe, they aren't wine dissensions. I just wonder if they do. If they said, look, we've removed all sanctions. The sanctions don't exist. That's it. They're over. Do you think Russia? What do you think? Do you think Russia? Tell me. Do you think Russia are going to be like, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's all good. We're going to resume all flights. We're going to resume all trade. We're going to sell you as much gas and popular gas and crude. Or, you know, look, we'll let bygones be bygones. And let's just resume as we were back in 2021. Do you think Russia will do that? Because I don't. I don't think they're going to do that. In fact, I think they're going to put in place in bargos. They'll put in place like a certification process for companies to export to certain markets. Specifically, the European Union, not the US. I think they're going to happily drive the US. But I think they'll put in place export regimes for Russian exporters. And they'll basically set the rules to be incredibly punitive. And they'll target. They'll use this to sec their revenge, multi-decker revenge against the companies that aligned with this ideology. I wouldn't be surprised because that is a way of getting multi-generational revenge for this whole war. I'm just thinking how the Russians would think I'm not saying it's good or bad. I'm just saying I think I wouldn't be surprised if Europe will like, please give us that popular gas. Can we go back to the rates we used to get those long term contracts? Can we please get those rates back? Because they're amazing. I'm pretty sure Russia is going to go net. I'm pretty sure they will. Anyway, the whole thing is interesting. I think it's bloody interesting discussion. I think it's bloody interesting. And I think it's all started. Right now, we're seeing how this absolute debacle is actually playing out and closing. I think the whole thing is about to finish. It's bloody fascinating to me. I hope it's fascinating to you. I hope you're a good team. Have a great day. Bye.