ATHENS – If the measures now announced as sanctions had been on the table a few months before the invasion of Ukraine, “perhaps things had not taken this tragic turn,” opposition PASOK – Movement for Change leader Nikos Androulakis said on Monday in an interview with Skai radio. He called on the European institutions to not delay any longer in establishing the tools for defence and security, but also in the institutional completion of a unified foreign policy. Therefore, he concluded, “the character of the European Union is now being judged.”

“The behaviour of Mr Borrell and the Brussels bureaucrats has allowed despotic third-country leaders to see Europe as a forum for discussion that cannot impose its values -stability, prosperity, peace – in the wider region,” he said.

“We must move faster with the political unification of Europe by acquiring tools that will make all European peoples secure,” he said, citing the Greek experience in the face of challenges from a third country, such as Turkey – though he noted that the two situations could not be compared.

On the issue of sanctions, he described them as “very severe” and said that SWIFT, especially, will create huge problems for the Russian economy.