The Lithuanian and British foreign ministers on Thursday after a meeting in Vilnius are calling for all Russian banks to be removed from the international payment system SWIFT. At the moment, seven banks do not have access to the system, but the countries want the EU to go further.

Gabrielius Landsbergis, the Lithuanian Foreign minister, and his British counterpart Liz Truss met on Thursday in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius. Sanctions against Russia for the invasion of Ukraine were also discussed there.

After the conversation, the two ministers announced in a press conference that they believe the EU is not going far enough in its sanctions.

“We must do everything we can to ensure that no Russian bank has access to SWIFT,” Truss said. Landsbergis agreed, adding that it should not be taboo to close Russia’s gas supply to Europe.

SWIFT is a system that regulates international payments between banks in different countries. It is not so much a system that settles the payments, but it takes care of the communication between the banks. You can compare it best with WhatsApp, but with encrypted standard messages.

This works on a small scale, for example when we buy something from an American online store, but all international payments between countries are also arranged through that system.

If banks are closed off, a large part of international payments will be stopped. There are alternatives, but they are still in their infancy and are much more complex than SWIFT.

Shutting down gas imports is the very last option for the EU, because such an action would also seriously damage our economy. Germany, for example, is dependent on Russia for more than half of its gas supply. The Netherlands gets 20 percent of the gas from Russia.