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 "Business will implement what the government and EU decide. If they
say Russia is not cooperating enough and we are applying tougher
sanctions, we'll back that 100 percent," Eckhard Cordes of the
Committee on Eastern European Economic Relations told the daily
Handelsblatt in an interview published on Friday.
Other business lobby groups have also begun taking a tougher tone
against Moscow, especially since the downing of a Malaysian plane
last week over eastern Ukraine, killing 298 people. That incident
has been widely blamed on pro-Russian separatists.
Earlier on in the Ukraine crisis, business groups like the one
Cordes presides warned against tough sanctions on Russia, saying it
could cost thousands of jobs in Germany's export-oriented industry
and push up energy prices in Europe.
German exports to Russia dropped by 14 percent in the first four
months of the year, according to official data, and Cordes has
warned that the decline in trade is putting some 25,000 jobs at risk
in Germany.
But as the European Union, the United States and allies add people
and companies to their trade blacklists and inch towards wide
sectoral sanctions, German business has begun speaking of the
"primacy of politics" - while hoping for a ceasefire.
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"If the price has to be paid, we will pay it," said Cordes.
He said proposed financial sanctions blocking Russian access to
capital markets would be "the most painful and would have a very
rapid effect", while sanctions affecting arms and energy companies
would take longer to show an impact.
(Reporting by Stephen Brown; Editing by Tom Heneghan)
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