Section: European Voice (EU)
Insecurity casts pall over EU’s backyard
The European Commission today (25 March) published reports on 12 states neighbouring the European Union that collectively show that conflicts in Ukraine, Syria, Iraq, Libya and Palestine have significantly constrained the EU’s efforts to promote trade, human rights and political reform. Nonetheless, the reports by the European Commission,...
Only peace will bring end to sanctions against Russia, says EU
The European Union will lift economic sanctions against Russia only when it fulfils all the conditions of a peace deal agreed with Ukraine, national leaders of the EU’s member states decided today (19 March) at a summit in Brussels. The agreement amounts to an adjustment of the EU’s eight-month-old regime of economic sanctions to...
Russia and energy on summit agenda
Many leaders of the European Union’s member states are heading into a two-day summit today expecting a relatively quiet meeting, but fearful that a topic that is not on the agenda, Greece’s battle with its creditors, will disrupt the meeting and sour the mood. The summit will start with a conversation with Martin Schulz, the president...
EU struggles to find consensus on Libya
Federica Mogherini, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, is asking European leaders to consider deploying troops to Libya to help international efforts to stabilise the country, but the idea has been greeted warily. She has also encountered deep scepticism about proposals to create camps in Libya to house would-be migrants to Europe....
Crimea Tatars living ‘in fear’
The leader of the Crimean Tatars has warned that, 12 months after Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine, his community is living in an “atmosphere of fear and intimidation”, and is being weakened by migration. Mustafa Dzhemilev, a Soviet-era dissident who has been thrown out of Crimea, said in Brussels on 17 March that a United Nations calculation...
How to lose friends and alienate people
Friendship generates goodwill and friends in need of favours can usually expect offers of help and understanding. The European Union’s political culture attaches a premium to co-operation and solidarity because the club cannot successfully function without them. Member states only lose the goodwill of their partners in extreme...
Imagining Russia without Putin
Prescient or preposterous? Vladimir Putin’s absence from public life sparked a frenzy of speculation last week. Some commentators thought a backstage coup was under way or at least a full-scale Kremlin power struggle, in which the Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov (a staunch ally of Putin) was ranged against the siloviki of the security and...
Crimea’s grim anniversary
The first anniversary of Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula falls on Wednesday (18 March). In Russia, the anniversary will be hard to miss: large celebrations are planned. The European Union will mark the moment in glum ways, both explicitly – EU foreign ministers will put out a critical statement when they meet today...
Africa in foreign ministers’ focus
The European Union’s relations with Africa are currently top of the agenda for a meeting of EU foreign ministers on Monday (16 March). The ministers had originally been expected to talk about Africa on 9 February, but instead spent two hours debating whether to delay sanctions against 19 Russians and Ukrainians by a week to help an emerging...
Russian threat looms large over EU summit
European Union leaders will discuss the threat posed by Russia at next week’s European Council (19-20 March). The immediate challenge will be how the EU should respond to violations of the Minsk agreement – the ceasefire negotiated by Angela Merkel, the German chancellor and François Hollande, the French president, on the eve of the last...
