Editor’s Note
This article discusses the increasing international pressure to ban Russian diamond imports, a topic expected to be addressed by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
The calls for a ban on imports of diamonds from Russia due to the war in Ukraine are growing louder.
Antwerp – Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is scheduled to speak before the Belgian Parliament on Thursday (March 31, 2022) – and he has built a strong reputation for addressing uncomfortable truths directly. In his address to the German Bundestag, he explained how German policy prioritizes business interests over ethics. He also bluntly questioned whose side Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is on in the Ukraine war.
According to the magazine Politico, when it comes to Belgium, parliamentarians are prepared for Zelenskyy to focus on the continued import of Russian rough diamonds into the Belgian city of Antwerp – a business that enriches Alrosa, a partially state-owned company.
Russia is the world’s largest exporter of rough diamonds. According to the Flemish government, rough diamonds worth 1.8 billion euros were exported to Belgium’s second-largest city last year, making Antwerp the most important destination for diamond exports from Russia, Politico reports.
In the previous sanctions package, the EU introduced an export ban on a wide range of European luxury goods to Russia. Diamonds are included. But politicians and activists are pushing the EU to go further.
As Politico reports, the vast majority of Russian diamonds are mined by Alrosa. CEO Sergey Sergeyevich Ivanov and his father, Sergei Borisovich Ivanov, former chief of staff to Russian President Vladimir Putin, are already on the US sanctions list, but not on the European one. Overall, Alrosa reported generating $4 billion from the sale of rough diamonds in 2021.
The US has also restricted imports of rough diamonds from Russia. The non-governmental organization Justice & Paix now wants the EU to follow suit.
The NGO’s demand is supported by the Belgian Greens, who are currently part of the government.
The Greens want Belgium to urge the European Commission to introduce such a ban and to place Sergey Sergeyevich Ivanov on the European sanctions list.
But this could backfire, argues the Antwerp diamond industry. According to Politico, Tom Neys, a spokesperson for the Antwerp World Diamond Center, said such sanctions would simply divert trade to other diamond centers in India and the United Arab Emirates. He argues that sanctions only make sense if they are global.
Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo has repeatedly stated that Belgium has not and will not block sanctions on the diamond trade if the European Commission wants to include such a step in its sanctions packages. However, De Croo argues that an import stop would not align with one of the key principles of EU sanctions: that they should harm Russia more than the EU.
If transatlantic allies agreed to a stricter import ban on Russian rough diamonds, it would harm Moscow more than if Washington or Brussels acted alone, Hans Merket, a researcher at the non-profit human rights organization IPIS, told Politico.