In an open letter to Chancellor Olaf Scholz, the chairmen of several consumer cooperatives and companies in East Germany called for “the embargo policy on Russia to be readjusted.” What is meant by this is that the federal government should lift the sanctions imposed on Ukraine as a result of the Russian war of aggression. Even Russian economic data show that the predominantly Western sanctions against Russia are having an effect. For example, the production of cars, airplanes and machines. And this despite the fact that, according to the Bloomberg news agency, only half of the G20 countries, which together account for around 85 percent of global economic output, are taking part in the sanctions.
The consumer cooperatives, on the other hand, argue in their letter to Scholz: The sanctions should “hit Putin, but not ruin the German middle class”. Now, however, many cooperative members from trade, industry and the hotel industry are “acutely endangered in their existence”. If the traffic light government does not change its sanctions policy, Germany is threatened “due to the continued decline in economic output, massive company deaths, the associated unemployment and falling (tax) revenues”. To illustrate the explosive nature of the situation, the authors cite several examples, from a shortage of skilled workers to energy costs.
The twelve signatories include board members and chairmen of several consumer cooperatives, for example from Weimar and Dresden, the managing directors of the Stendaler Landbäckerei, the coffee roaster Röstfein and the consumer hotel Oberhof-Weimar. According to their own statements, they stand for a sales volume of 700 million euros and around 6280 employees.
Criticism of the sanctions policy in general is not new. Within the European Union, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban is one of the most vehement opponents. From his point of view, too, the sanctions allegedly not only failed to fulfill the hopes attached to them, but even had the opposite effect. The fact is that sanctions are double-edged and can also harm the sanctioning party. According to his own statement, Russia’s ruler Vladimir Putin knows this.
How the authors of the letter imagine the readjustment of the sanctions policy, they do not write. In the letter, you also do not condemn Russia’s criminal war of aggression against Ukraine. Nor do they address the fact that the sanctions have been agreed with other EU states and are integrated into EU politics. Not a word either that they serve to defend higher values, such as democracy in Ukraine and beyond.