France says EU will lift some sanctions on Syria after al-Assad’s fall

According to France’s foreign minister, some sanctions placed on Syria by the EU will be lifted as part of a wider EU strategy to stabilize Damascus following President Bashar al-Assad’s ouster in December.

At a meeting on Monday in Brussels, EU foreign ministers discussed the subject.

“Regarding&nbsp, Syria, we are going to decide today to&nbsp, lift, to suspend, certain&nbsp, sanctions&nbsp, that had applied to the energy and transport sectors and to financial institutions that were key to the financial stabilisation of the country”, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said on arrival at the meeting in Brussels.

A lightning strike on December 8 put an abrupt end to a devastating 13-year conflict that had been ruled by Al-Assad’s family for 54 years. The conflict caused the majority of the country’s population to live in poverty, leaving many of Syria’s major cities in ruin.

Al-Assad’s use of torture chambers&nbsp, and&nbsp, chemical weapons during the war turned the country into a pariah state.

In 2011, the US and the EU imposed a number of crippling sanctions on Syria, which denied Damascus access to the world’s capital markets and trade revenues. Western&nbsp, restrictions in effect cut off Syria’s formal economy from the rest of the world.

The EU is currently working in stages to reduce its sanctions.

Julien Barnes-Dacey, a director at the European Council on Foreign Relations, told Al Jazeera “there will be a strong sense of conditionality” applied on the lifting of sanctions.

He added that the EU wants to allow the new government in Syria to spend money while allowing time to assess whether the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) coalition, which is led by former rebels, will develop in a way that is fair to both human rights and democratic principles.

“The idea is to create the conditions for a positive transition”, Barnes-Dacey said. “But Europeans want to lock in a snap-back option, so that if HTS does not move forward with an inclusive transition, those sanctions can come back into play”.

He added that easing Syria’s numerous crises will depend on the lifting of US sanctions.

“European sanctions by themselves won’t be a fundamental game-changer. He claimed that US sanctions are actually spooking off international business and foreign finance flows.