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Designated CDU chairman Merz: “We would do ourselves considerable harm”
Photo: Michael Kappeler / dpa
Before the visit of Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock (Greens) in Kiev and Moscow, the designated CDU leader Friedrich Merz warns against excluding Moscow from the international bank payment system Swift.
“Questioning Swift could be the atomic bomb for the capital markets and also for goods and services,” he told the dpa news agency.
"We should leave Swift untouched."
»I would see massive economic setbacks for our national 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 the 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 Zelenskyj 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.
Europe should speak with one voice
Russia is demanding that Ukraine and Georgia should 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. “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, if necessary also persuade Russia to give in and give in here.«
In the dispute over the Russian-German Nord Stream 2 pipeline, through which Russian natural gas is to be transported bypassing the Ukraine, Germany "avoidably maneuvered its way 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, Chancellor, stop telling us this story,” he said in the direction of 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.
mike/dpa
