European Union ambassadors approved a 21st sanctions package against Russia on Thursday morning, to decidedly muted fanfare. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s claim that the sanctions “continue to weaken the economic foundations of Russia’s war effort” rang hollow, following days of frustrated, chaotic negotiation in which member states focused more on securing beneficial opt-outs than finding common ground.

The headline agreement was the freezing of the EU’s price cap on Russian oil at $44 a barrel for a further 12 months, limiting the country’s gains from global energy price volatility. Still, Brussels has already surrendered much of its leverage on the Russian oil trade through import bans, with Moscow turning to new markets and reduced reliance on European shipping providers. The sanctions also hit shadow fleet vessels, oil refineries, dozens more Russian financial institutions — 32 of which will be disconnected from the SWIFT payment network — and individuals or business identified as supporting the invasion of Ukraine.

Proposals fell notably flat, however, when they threatened national economic interests. Greece almost blew up the entire sanctions package in response to a proposal to ban EU firms from shipping Russian gas outside the bloc; Greece is one of the largest LNG exporters in Europe and fears for its global market share. A one-year automatically-renewing extension was agreed, allowing key Greek shipping company Dynagas — which operates a significant proportion of tankers servicing Russia’s crucial Yamal LNG plant in northern Siberia — to continue shipping Russian gas outside the EU.

It has become a familiar story, with each new sanctions round watered down to stop individual member states torpedoing agreement on the entire package. Greece’s role was previously played by Hungary and Slovakia over Russian energy, and Belgium over frozen assets and the diamond trade. With erstwhile sanctions blocker Viktor Orbán no longer a convenient scapegoat for other leaders to hide behind, and with the low-hanging fruit on sanctions already plucked, member states appear increasingly to view protecting their national interests from the impact of sanctions as the top priority, rather than exerting maximum pressure on the Kremlin.

While Greece caused the biggest panic, objections and holdouts from other nations combined to leave the approved package a sorry shadow of what was proposed. Bulgaria secured the exemption of Russian Orthodox leader Patriarch Kirill from the individual sanctions list, while Foreign Minister Velislava Petrova-Chamova justified her nation’s opposition by arguing that “when you have sanctions that have a purely symbolic measure but no economic consequences on Russia, you risk — in an Eastern Orthodox country such as Bulgaria — brewing anti-European rhetoric.”

A push from the Baltic states to ban Russians who participated in the war effort from entering the EU was watered down significantly, following opposition from France, Italy and Greece. The bloc could not even reach agreement on the topic of fish: a proposed ban on fish imports was axed altogether amid German concerns over the loss of Russian haddock, as well as Polish and Portuguese insistence on continued supplies of Russian pollock and cod, respectively.

That the EU genuinely wants to damage the Russian economy isn’t in question, but the nature of sanctions negotiations makes a mockery of the rhetoric used by EU leaders. If German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, for example, really believes Russia’s invasion is “a war against our democracy and a war against our freedom”, his government would surely be willing to brave the political risks of haddock-related inflation.

The determination to relentlessly grind out watered-down sanctions even hands a PR boost to the Kremlin. Vladimir Putin can point out that the Russian economy remains resilient no matter how many sanctions packages Brussels concocts. The bloc claims it is “hitting Putin where it hurts most”, in the words of its foreign affairs chief Kaja Kallas — but it cannot even deprive itself of Russian cod.

Even more concerning, from the perspective of Brussels, is that sanctions negotiations highlight the yawning chasm between longed-for “strategic autonomy” driven by centralization of EU decision-making, and the pesky realities of conflicting national interests. Haggling over pollock and patriarchs proves that the EU will never be able to bring its economic might to bear on global affairs without trampling further on the sovereignty of its member states.