BRUSSELS, January 27. /TASS/. Lacking any real power, the EU uses a soft sanctions policy to try to upend regimes it doesn’t like, Luxembourg MEP Fernand Kartheiser said at an international conference in Brussels titled Unilateral Coercive Measures: Contemporary Threats and Challenges.

The conference was organized by the Belarusian mission in Belgium and brought together several members of the European Parliament as well as Elena Dovgan, the UN Special Rapporteur on the negative impact of unilateral coercive measures on the enjoyment of human rights.

"What are sanctions? They are simply means of attempting to provoke regime change. We saw this with Russia in 2022, when it was very popular to say that Russia was a gas station pretending to be a state. Today, the same thing is happening with Iran. Sanctions [in Brussels’s view] are supposed to provoke economic difficulties that bring about regime change," he said.

"Why are we doing this? Because we are weak. Europe no longer knows what it is, our narrative is weak, no one believes in it. That is why Brussels has to resort to repression and sanctions," Kartheiser added.