Sanctions cost Italy over €5bn, bank chief estimates

Banca Intesa Chariman Antonio Fallico

Sanctions cost Italy over €5bn: The sanctions imposed on Russia by the EU after the annexation of  Crimea and Russia’s retaliatory counter-sanctions on EU food imports have cost Italy more than €5bn,  Banca Intesa Chairman Antonio Fallico claimed this week. “The sanction have had a greater impact on Europe than on Russia itself,” he told a press conference in Krasnodar yesterday. Around 300,000 Italians had lost their jobs in sectors that relied on exports to Russia for their survival, he calculated. In addition to agriculture, the fashion furniture manufacturing and machine building sectors had also suffered along with tourism where the number of Russian visitors had halved. Last year, Fallico went on record to describe the sanctions as economic “suicide.”