Verhofstadt criticises Ashton: EU must introduce immediate oil embargo

"Reacting to the Statement by High Representative Catherine Ashton on Syria, ALDE Leader, Guy Verhofstadt is critical of the inability of the EU to come up with effective sanctions and reiterates his previous calls to immediately ban oil imports from Syrian companies. 

"For months we have repeatedly called on Mrs Ashton to get her act together and ban Syrian oil imports. The US announced today "unprecedented sanctions" including an oil ban and the EU finds itself playing catch up once again.  The United States is hitting hard while the EU waits and mulls over what further steps to take. This is utterly unacceptable.  Syria is 10.000 km away from Washington DC but less than 500 km away from Cyprus, an EU member state, yet the EU has been unable to introduce any meaningful steps to introduce hard-hitting sanctions."

He continued "Mrs Ashton said today that "the EU is proceeding to further action", I call on her to be more forthright and introduce an immediate oil embargo -  enough is enough "."