|
2023-09-02 Europe
|
|
EU summit: Borrell refused to jump out the window, and Kuleba demanded to shut up
|
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
by Evgenia Kondakova
[REGNUM] In the last summer days, August 30-31, an informal meeting of the Ministers of Defense and Foreign Affairs of the EU member states took place in the Spanish city of Toledo.
EU prepares for enlargement for first time in 10 years
In the not so distant future, the number of participants in such events may increase - EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell, following a conversation with foreign ministers, called for intensifying preparations for the admission of ten states to the European Union, moreover, clearly agreeing on the time frame for a new stage of expansion.
The last time this happened was ten years ago, in 2013, when Croatia joined the EU.
Currently, eight countries have the official status of candidates for EU membership: Ukraine, Moldova, Turkey (since 1999), Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Albania, North Macedonia.
“Ukraine should become a new member of the EU, the Western Balkans too. The war in Ukraine has accelerated the process of EU enlargement. A candidate state can become a member of the EU if all conditions are met, but at the same time it would be good to set a political goal and horizon to give impetus to the process,” Borrell said.
Individual countries will need huge help to prepare for EU accession, especially Ukraine, he added.
The idea of Ukraine's admission to the EU already raised concerns due to its weak economy, and even more so after the outbreak of hostilities. In Kiev, of course, they would like to join the union as soon as possible and, as a full-fledged member of the community, continue to demand even more money and weapons from their partners, but now emphasizing that they not only can, but are obliged to do this.
According to sources in the British newspaper The Guardian, the most likely applicants for EU membership are Ukraine and Moldova, but nothing will be done to speed up this process unless maximum political pressure is exerted within the bloc. Why would member countries agree to an expansion contrary to the status quo, the interlocutor of the publication asked.
Nowhere without Ukraine
Almost no event of Western states is already complete without talking about the situation inside and around Ukraine, and this summit was no exception. Moreover, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba arrived in Toledo together with French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna after a two-day visit as an honored guest from Paris.
On August 30, following the negotiations between the heads of the defense departments, Borrell said that Ukraine needs long-term, predictable, sustainable military support, moreover, against the backdrop of a counteroffensive - which, however, comes with a minus sign for the Armed Forces of Ukraine. To do this, he proposed creating within the framework of the European Peace Fund (although it would be more correct to call it a war fund) a special fund for military support of Ukraine in the period from 2024 to 2027 in the amount of €20 billion, that is, €5 billion per year.
“This should be a ceiling, but not a mandatory spending target. If we can spend less, the better,” he said.
The money should be used to implement a plan to support Ukraine, which the EU has been developing for several months, it provides for arming the Armed Forces of Ukraine and training the military. Part of the funds are planned to be spent on covering the costs of the community countries for the purchase of weapons, ammunition, spare parts for military equipment, as well as for training personnel for the Ukrainian army.
Borrell also put forward a proposal to increase the target for the number of Ukrainian troops trained under the EU's European training mission to 40,000, as the initial target of 30,000 fighters would be reached as early as October.
The head of European diplomacy hopes that his ideas will be implemented by the end of 2023.
However, there is no guarantee that this will work out - on the eve of the summit, Financial Times sources said that disagreements arose among the EU countries on the need to increase the community budget due to problems in national economies with the planned 4-year assistance to Kiev. Countries are divided and some are calling for spending cuts. For example, spending on Ukraine.
Attempts to raise the topic of the effectiveness of military efforts caused a real hysteria in the Ukrainian diplomat. Kuleba "recommended all critics to shut up, come to Ukraine and try to free one square centimeter on their own." Such questions and criticisms about the pace of the " counteroffensive " he called a spit in the face of the heroic Ukrainian soldier.
Sounded in Spain and words of support, which are like honey for the ears of Kyiv.
So, German Foreign Minister Annalena Burbock said that we need to think about how Europe can help Kiev even more, and her Lithuanian colleague Gabrielius Landsbergis called on the West to stop saying the phrase about “ supporting Ukraine for as long as it takes ”, because it no longer works - you need to set the task of being with Ukraine to the bitter end. However, not all participants of the summit were in the same mood.
One against all
The Minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Economic Relations of Hungary, Peter Szijjártó, spoke out at the summit . It was on the Ukrainian issue that he was one against all in the most direct sense.
Hungary opposed the allocation of a new €500 million military aid package to Ukraine and the creation of a special fund of €20 billion for 2024-2027, as suggested by Borrell.
“Unfortunately, today I was the only one who spoke out against this approach. We don't want four more years of war. We want this war to end as soon as possible ,” the diplomat said in an interview with the Hungarian M1 TV channel on the sidelines of the event, lamenting that the vast majority of EU countries still “ want at any cost and by all means ” to continue to arm the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
Leaving for the summit, Szijjarto, in a video message on his social media page, predicted with regret that his colleagues would talk in Toledo about new arms supplies to Ukraine, and not about peace talks. The voice of peace must be strengthened, he said, because every weapon given to Kyiv kills more people, and this is what Budapest wants to prevent.
Moreover, the minister demanded that the leadership of the European Union report in detail on what about €50-70 billion already allocated to Ukraine has been spent.
In an interview recorded in Toledo, Szijjártó admitted that he was under intense pressure to force Hungary to vote for another €500 million tranche of military aid to Ukraine to finance arms supplies, as well as a €20 billion package for the next four years. However, he remained true to the position of his state and blocked these initiatives.
According to the minister, if Hungary agreed, then it would have to allocate 80 billion forints (over €200 million) from the funds of its taxpayers, who are in no way responsible for the war in Ukraine.
Money and language
A decision on additional funds for funding related to Ukraine is out of the question until Kiev removes the largest Hungarian bank OTP from the list of “international war sponsors,” Szijjártó warned, and he got there on May 4 by decision of the National corruption prevention agencies due to ongoing work with Russia.
Borrell wanted to raise the issue of the need to remove this shameful stigma from the financial institution at a specially organized meeting of the Foreign Ministers of Hungary and Ukraine, but Kuleba refused. Apparently, not wanting to look pale when trying to justify their country's act in this situation and thinking about what to say in response to the conclusions of EU lawyers, presented by the head of European diplomacy, that OTP's actions did not violate any EU laws or sanctions.
If Ukraine agrees with the opinion of lawyers, then it will have to actually approve the cooperation of the Western structure with Russia, and this will create a dangerous precedent, and who knows how many European, and maybe even American companies, referring to the example of OTP, will resume working with partners From Russia. Sanctions don’t work anyway, Vladimir Putin “didn’t complain at all” about them in conversations with Western politicians, which, as it turned out from the publication of the German newspaper Bild, was very surprised by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and French President Emmanuel Macron .
In relations between Budapest and Kyiv, there is another serious problem that hinders the promotion of pro-Ukrainian initiatives in the international arena - this is the observance of the rights of ethnic Hungarians living in Ukraine. And it appeared long before the start of the NWO.
After the Maidan, the Verkhovna Rada, by its very first decision, invalidated the law “On the Fundamentals of the State Language Policy” (known as the Kivalov-Kolesnichenko law), according to which in regions where representatives of national minorities made up at least 10% of the population, the regional language could be used on a par with the state. Thanks to this, in the city of Beregovo (Transcarpathia), both the state Ukrainian language and regional Hungarian were freely used in official everyday life.
Budapest was not going to turn a blind eye to this and, referring to the violation of the rights of the Hungarians, blocked the holding of the Ukraine-NATO Council. Now this topic can become a serious obstacle on the way of Ukraine to the EU.
“Hungary will take this into account when the EU begins to study in the fall the extent to which Ukraine met expectations regarding the start of accession negotiations,” Szijjártó warned.
From September 1, 15,000 ethnic Hungarians in Transcarpathia are deprived of the right to continue their studies in universities in their native language due to new Ukrainian laws, the Foreign Minister noted, calling the current situation a serious violation of international law, and this is not an unfounded accusation of a Hungarian diplomat, but a fact, earlier confirmed by the Venice Commission.
Shadow of Austria-Hungary
At the summit in Toledo, Szijjarto single-handedly resisted not only pro-Ukrainian, but also anti-Russian initiatives.
“One of the EU member states has announced the need to impose sanctions against the Russian nuclear industry, but the Hungarian government still will not agree to this. And not only because it is contrary to national interests, but also because the proposal for nuclear sanctions undermines the competitiveness of the European economy and makes us look stupid,” he said.
While the EU is discussing restrictive measures against Russian nuclear energy, the United States continues to work closely with this sector, Szijjarto noted: according to the latest statistics, Washington more than tripled its imports of uranium from Russia in the first half of 2023, to such high levels, which have not been since 2005 - about a quarter of nuclear reactors in America operate on Russian fuel.
However, at the summit, there were still officials who spoke out against the blind boundless support of Kyiv.
In an interview with journalists, Austrian Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg said: “We are talking about what the European Union is ready to continue to do for Ukraine, we have already done a lot. But from the point of view of Austria, I would like to say quite clearly that our line is unchanged: it is clear to us that we will neither supply weapons nor finance the supply of weapons. This is incompatible with our neutrality."
Although in fairness it should be said that Austria has long begun to act contrary to the status of a permanently neutral state - when, within the EU, it joined the anti-Russian sanctions.
And in order not to be caught in pro-Russian views - which is now considered unacceptable in the West - Schallenberg condemned Moscow's conduct of a special military operation, but at the same time stressed that it remains to be discussed whether Ukraine really needs this €20 billion and how it will be spent.
To the question of the host in an interview with the Austrian radio program Ö1-Morgenjournal, does anyone else believe that Ukraine will be able to return its territories with the help of military means and whether the minister believes that the war must go to a victorious end, or there are alternatives, such as a frozen conflict, Schallenberg replied: “Of course there are alternatives. Of course, I am the first who would like diplomacy. I want peace to reign again. Kyiv must decide for itself when this step will be taken.”
Surprises from Africa
But if Ukraine has become accustomed to demands and military actions since 2015, then military coups in African countries came as a complete surprise to Europeans. At the end of July in Niger, the military overthrew President Mohamed Bazum, and on the morning of August 30, just on the opening day of the summit in Toledo, immediately after being re-elected for a new term, the current President of Gabon, Ali Bongo Ondimba, was placed under house arrest.
As it became known to the American publication Politico, on the eve of the meeting of the Ministers of Defense and Foreign Affairs, the European External Action Service circulated " Informal document on possible restrictive measures of the EU in connection with the situation in Niger", which refers to the request of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) contained in in a letter sent to Borrell to impose sanctions against the organizers of the military coup in Niger, as well as officials who hinder or undermine efforts to restore constitutional order.
The foreign ministers of the EU countries expressed support for ECOWAS, whose head Omar Alle Touré , together with the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the ousted government of Niger, Mohamed Bazuma Asumi Masudu, who managed to escape to Nigeria, arrived in Toledo.
Borrell said that Brussels agreed to consider all initiatives in detail, and when asked if the EU was ready to support a military operation in Niger, he replied: "If we are asked to jump out the window, we will not do it."
Borrell called the events in Gabon alarming and expressed concern that this coup would further destabilize the situation in the region. But the Europeans themselves should also be concerned.
“In Niger they wave Russian flags, they sing anti-French songs, and this shows that our soft power, our influence is much less than we thought. The European Union must rethink its approach to relations with African countries. We still use an overly arrogant tone,” Shallenberg said.
And his Luxembourg colleague Jean Asselborn stated that the EU policy has failed and continues to go according to plan. The minister called on Europe to start a dialogue with Africa again, and to make it clear to the representatives of the Black Continent that they not only want something from them, but can also offer something.
|
Posted by badanov 2023-09-02 00:00||
||
Front Page|| [21 views ]
Top
File under: Tin Hat Dictators, Presidents for Life,
|
|
21:48 Pancho Poodle8452
21:20 Lord Garth
20:21 Frank G
20:10 SteveS
19:40 M. Murcek
19:23 Chantry
19:08 Chantry
18:08 Frank G
18:07 Besoeker
18:07 Frank G
18:06 Frank G
18:01 Gleremble+Bucket3559
17:52 NN2N1
17:44 alanc
17:32 alanc
17:28 Frank G
17:28 Procopius2k
17:04 M. Murcek
17:01 Mullah Richard
16:30 M. Murcek
16:15 Regular+joe
16:05 Regular+joe
15:53 M. Murcek
15:37 M. Murcek
|
