EU President of the European Commission Von Der Leyen says that they are working on the 22nd package of sanctions against Russia, adding that no sanctions will be lifted unless Russia stops its war

Successive EU sanctions rounds have followed a familiar sequence: weeks of internal negotiation among member states, with carve-outs traded against unanimous consent, before adoption and a subsequent compliance and circumvention phase. The marginal market significance of each new package has tended to decline as the obvious targets are exhausted; later rounds have historically shifted toward enforcement, third-country entities, and closing evasion channels rather than fresh headline measures. The unconditionality of the statement matters more than the package itself: linking all sanctions relief to a cessation of the war forecloses the incremental, reversible-easing frameworks that have featured in other sanctions regimes, and signals the Commission's posture ahead of any negotiation track. Implementation detail is the tell: the designation lists, the extent of extraterritorial reach, and whether energy, insurance, or shipping services features survive the internal bargaining. Statements of this kind from the Commission presidency are agenda-setting rather than decision; the binding moment is Council adoption. Watch for member-state resistance signals, which in past rounds have been the reliable indicator of how diluted the final text will be.