“We want these sanctions to go… They were imposed with concrete goals in mind. We were meeting in Berlin on Saturday as part of the Normady Four format [with German and Ukrainian Foreign Ministers] and discussed important issues like ceasefire and elections in Donbass… It was a constructive meeting and now we are going to have a summit in Paris on October 2. We in France believe that if these issues are settled we want [the anti-Russian sanctions] to be lifted,” Laurent Fabius told members of the parliament’s Foreign Affairs committee.
Jacques Myard, a Republican member of France’s National Assembly, earlier urged President Francois Hollande to lift the sanctions imposed on Russia which he said were harming the national economy.
“The anti-Russian sanctions are a major problem we now have to deal with… We’ve been pushed into a corner by European solidarity. We have many companies in Russia, we have partners there who are now turning away from us and looking towards China, we are in a real squeeze with no room for maneuver,” Myard complained.