France says it backs cutting Russia off from SWIFT

By AFP 25 February 2022, 5:13 pm

Edit

French Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire leaves the Elysee presidential palace after a weekly cabinet meeting in Paris, on May 30, 2018. (Ludovic MARIN/AFP)

France is in favor of excluding Russia from the global SWIFT interbank system but other European states have “reservations” about using such a “financial nuclear weapon,” Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire says.

“Some (European Union) member states have shown reservations, France is not one of these states,” Le Maire tells reporters after a meeting of EU finance ministers in Paris, adding that SWIFT exclusion would be weighed “not in the coming days or weeks, but in the coming hours.”