BRUSSELS, March 3 (Reuters) – The European Union is considering excluding banks in Belarus from the SWIFT messaging system that underpins the global financial transactions, as it has already done for seven Russian banks, an EU official said on Thursday.
“On the SWIFT side, we’re also looking now at the preparation of the equivalents for the Belarus financial sector, but knowing that SWIFT is not as strategically important in the Belarus economy as it is in the Russian side,” the official said.
Meanwhile, the European Union’s sanctions against Russia over its invasion of Ukraine are starting to have an initial impact, an other EU official said on Thursday.
“We believe that the package of sanctions we’ve put on the table is quite impressive and is now starting to have the first effects,” the official said.
“Take the economic side, we have the Moscow stock exchange being closed since Monday. The depreciation of the rouble is also quite impressive. The fact that the Russian Central Bank had to double his interest rate to 20% also,” the official continued.
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