The long diplomatic marathon, Poland's second thoughts, the final agreement: in one of the darkest days of the war in Ukraine, the EU formalized the expected exclusion of a list of Russian banks from the Swift payment system.
It is perhaps the sanction that could hurt Moscow the most and it is no coincidence that the negotiations between the member countries were extremely hard.
In the end, the Commission's proposal passed: seven banks have been canceled from the international payments system.
There is the giant Vtb Bank but not the gas bank, Gazprombank, left out of the restrictive measures at least for now.
Italy, and beyond, will therefore be able to continue to pay for Russian methane with the tools used in times of peace.
In the morning, the Commission's proposal finally arrived on the Coreper table.
The discussion between the European ambassadors was long and, in the afternoon, at a certain point unanimity even seemed to be skipped.
Indeed, Poland was asking for more.
Then the Warsaw resistance capitulated and the green light arrived that will make the measure effective in the next few hours.
In addition to Vtb Bank, the affected institutions are Bank Rossiya, Bank Otkritie, Novikombank, Promsvyazbank, Sovcombank and Veb.rf.
The largest Russian banking group, Sberbank, is also missing.
And the reasons aren't just related to gas.
As a European source explains, the Union needs to allow itself some room for maneuver in order to continue to impose increasingly harmful sanctions.
In short, Gazprombank and Sberbank could only be saved for a handful of days.
Also because for the G7 and the
"The West is ready to escalate them as long as necessary," British Prime Minister Boris Johnson warned.
The scheme of the new package could also include a stop to the use of maritime space by the Russians.
"The announcement of Western sanctions already has a massive impact, after what is happening there can be no business as usual," German Finance Minister Christian Lindner explained at the meeting of the G7 economies.
"The banning of Russia Today and Sputnik from all EU media will also be operational in the next few hours: television, satellite, streaming, apps, IPTV and ISP", announced Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton.
Taiwan in the meantime has also decided to impose sanctions against Moscow,
while Turkey has gone unmarked: no restrictive measures, with the aim of keeping the dialogue open, Ankara explained.
In short, Brussels tries to squeeze Moscow in the economic grip by supplying arms to Ukraine at the same time.
The hub where member countries are delivering even lethal military material to the Ukrainian army is in Poland.
But at the same time, fears about the effects of the war and the sanctions themselves are growing in the EU.
"We must suspend the stability pact, remove military and humanitarian spending from the debt and create a fund that helps families and businesses in the most damaged countries", recommended EPP vice president Antonio Tajani.
A war recovery, in short, to which Italy - given the trade relations with Moscow and Kiev - could aspire to.
An informal Ecofin, scheduled for the afternoon, will analyze the situation.
The Stability Pact, explained a European source, cannot be further suspended.
The platform on which to move are the guidelines for the budget laws of 2023 that Commissioner Paolo Gentiloni will present.
Certainly more flexible guidelines in the pace of debt reduction and which will take into account the
very high uncertainty linked to these months in which, after the Omicron wave, Europe found itself in war.
With a weight on the growth of 2022 which, in the worst estimates, reaches 0.7%.