I just missed the beginning. It didn't come through, sorry.
I think we'll see. As you know, the current European sanctions are scheduled to expire at the end of January 2017. The council met last week, and there are some indications that the sanctions are likely to be continued. I'd be happy to send you and members of the committee a report we just wrote for Rasmussen Global, where we looked at the economic impact of Russia's countermeasures on all 28 members of the European Union.
One of the things we discovered is that the burden is quite disproportionate on different countries. The Baltic republics, Poland, and Germany had the greatest reductions in trade as a result of primarily both the European measures as well as the Russian countermeasures. At the same time, businesses have been quite quick to adapt. What we found is that in many cases business is not waiting for the European Union to decide whether to continue sanctions, because they've already diversified their trade. Many companies and many firms have found new markets. They acted very quickly as soon as the markets were closed.
One of the interesting points that we discovered is that some of the countries that are the most strongly opposed to sanctions are the least affected in material terms. Greece, although it makes statements opposing the sanctions, has found its trade with Russia has increased in the past year and a half. That has something to do with the situation in Greece, as well, but it's an interesting dynamic. We wrote this report primarily to inform the debate in Europe, and we were applying the methods I just described to the previous questioner.
I was surprised. I did not expect there would be very much in the way of evidence of constraint on Russia, or restraint being exercised, and we've found quite a number of instances where Russia could have done more and did not. Sanctions were not the only factor by any means, but they do appear to be important in some cases. We'll see. I think we'll know in a month or so. We're currently presenting this report in various capitals—Berlin, Paris, London—in the next couple of weeks, so we'll see what reactions we get.
Thanks.