BRUSSELS, September 18 (RAPSI) – The European Parliament “calls on the EU to consider excluding Russia from (…) the SWIFT international payment system,” the parliament said in a resolution adopted today.

The European Parliament does not draft sanctions or adopt decisions on enforcement. It can only express its members’ opinion regarding a course of action. Sanctions are drafted by the European Commission and approved by the EU member-states.

The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) is an international payment system. More than 10,500 financial institutions and corporations in 215 countries exchange standardized financial messages worth over $6 trillion via SWIFT every day. Nearly all inter-bank settlements via SWIFT allow foreign banks to request information about Russian bank clients and to block transactions if they are not satisfied with the information they receive.