The European Union (EU) renewed the opposite sanctions to Russia and agreed a road map to raise some of the other people imposed on Syria. In an assembly of EU Foreign Ministers on Monday, leaders also requested a unified technique to deal with the president of the United States, Donald. Trump and what analysts call their “department and rules policy. ”
The EU’s top diplomat Kaja Kallas said as the US undertook a “transactional” foreign policy, Europe needed to “close ranks.”
“We are stronger when we are united,” she told reporters.
Zsuzsanna Vegh, a program officer at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, said that Trump intends to weaken the EU and deal with countries bilaterally.
“European leaders competing for attention from the Trump Administration will have a negative impact on the unity of the EU,” she told DW. “And Trump’s support for the euroskeptic European far right could further weaken the union.”
While no one is clear how exactly Trump’s policy will unfold in coming weeks, and fears of a trade war continue to grow, there is some hope that he may not go easy on Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Derrelles, the European diplomats relieved that Trump threatens to hit Russia with higher costs and even more sanctions if the war that Moscow began to oppose kyiv did not end.
Kallas said intelligently that Trump had exerted “more pressure” on Russia and made transparent that the burden of ending the war meets Putin.
The Europeans are taking Trump’s stern words against Russia as a positive sign. Experts say the US president’s position likely took Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who is more Putin-friendly than the rest of EU leaders, by surprise.
The EU renewed sanctions against Russia that industry with the country and froze billions in sovereign assets.
“Europe Deliver,” Kallas published in X when he showed the renewal of the sanctions that occurs every six months. “This will continue to deprive Moscow of profits to finance their war,” he added. “Russia will have to pay for the pain they are causing. ”
Orban had blocked the procedure and threatened to oppose his veto of the extension if the EU did not make Ukraine send Russian fuel through its pipelines in Hungary. Earlier this month, Ukraine will not renew an agreement that would allow Russian energy resources to circulate on its territory.
Orban said that he put the “hand brake” in the renewal of sanctions and that Hungary had lost billions since Ukraine stopped the Russian energy supply.
“If the Ukrainians want to help, for example, sanction the Russians, then allow them to reopen the pipe and allow them to allow the countries of Central Europe, adding Hungary, import the fuel that we want Ukraine,” said Orban.
But then Orban relented.
The Reuters news firm said that the EU Commission has published a statement that says that in a position to continue discussions with Ukraine “in Europe it offers through the fuel pipe in Ukraine according to the foreign obligations of Ukraine “
The commission said that Hungary and Slovakia would mean in the process.
“The Ukraine Commission will request insurance on the maintenance of pipeline transfers to the EU,” he added.
But the press release said anything about whether he would ask Ukraine to resume the Russian gas source, that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy refused categorically.
“We will let the Russians take merit,” he told the press last week when he proposed to create an alternative: allow Azerbaiyan to supply fuel to the needy European nations.
Experts say that after Trump’s unexpected admonishment of the Russian government to end the “ridiculous war” and “make a deal,” Orban found himself in a quandary.
Vegh said that Orban’s giving in regarding the EU sanctions reflected that he “took into account the American position.”
“[Orban] expected Trump to step in regarding the war in a way that would benefit Putin and him,” Vegh said. Trump’s position may have come as a surprise to Hungary, she added. Orban “did have to tone down his objections” to the renewal of sanctions against Russia, and is now forced to “carefully navigate his ties with Moscow and Washington.”
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The EU is also assessing progress in Syria, the transitional authority of the Islamist organization Hayat Tahir Al Sham (HTS), a former Al-Qaeda affiliate, as it raises sanctions opposed to the war-torn country.
The block agreed to a “roadmap to facilitate sanctions” while retaining the option to impose them again if Syria did not shape an inclusive government, or if it accused serious violations of human rights.
Julien Barnes-Dacey, director of the Middle East and North Africa Program at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), said there was an expanding consensus in Europe on the need for an immediate motion on sanctions relief, “even if there is a preference to ensure a certain degree of conditionality and reversibility to a safe leverage effect in the new authorities. “
“The unpleasant state of the economy is obviously one of the most demanding situations that faces a positive transition,” Barnes-Dacey told DW. “There is a genuine threat that if the country stabilizes, things can get worse quickly. “
Posted by: Carla Bleiker