Trading with dictators, EU may be funding threats to itself, ECB says

FRANKFURT (Reuters) -The European Union is increasingly trading with autocratic regimes, funding their often expansionary strategy and potentially aiding an existential challenge to the bloc itself, a European Central Bank blog post said on Tuesday. The EU has long prided itself on running a values-based economic policy, with trade relations taking into consideration factors such as social justice, human rights, labour rules, and environmental standards. But reality is quite different and trade with autocratic regimes has steadily risen from 1999 until the bloc imposed widespread sanctions on Russia after its invasion of Ukraine, the blog post authored by ECB economists Claudia Marchini and Alexander Popov argued.