The European Union will soon make a U-turn in its approach to Russia, according to the president of the Greek-Eurasian Business Council.

The European Union will soon review its sanctions policy toward Russia and shift its focus to cooperation, president of the Greek-Eurasian Business Council and Greece’s former Deputy Foreign Minister Spyros Kouvelis told Sputnik.

“The EU will gradually start reviewing its position towards the sanctions… I believe it is not a thing that will last for a very long time,” Kouvelis said.

“The time of the crisis would necessitate the opposite, i.e. the development of collaboration,” he added.

He stressed that cooperation with Russia had been made more complicated because of the sanctions, but expressed certainty that it is always possible to find ways of working together, even under such conditions.

According to Kouvelis, the sanctions regime “hampers the economy of not only the Russian Federation, but also the European Union” as it “does not serve the building of bridges between two very important potential partners, like the European Union and the Russian Federation”.

The European Union, along with the United States and their allies, have imposed a series of sanctions against Russia due to Moscow’s alleged involvement in the Ukrainian conflict — a claim that Russia has firmly denied.

In August 2014, the Russian government imposed a ban on the import of certain food products from countries that had introduced sanctions against Moscow. The ban has since been extended for another year.

The Austrian Institute of Economic Research recently published a study, in which it projected that the European Union could lose up to $114 billion, should the anti-Russia sanctions regime continue.