The heads of state and government of the European Union are meeting this Thursday in Brussels to address the divisions on migration and on the common response to the ‘doping’ of countries like the United States or China to their industries in the race for the green transition, although the agenda will finally be overshadowed by the presence of the president of Ukraine, Volodimir Zelenski, who will arrive in the European capital after visiting London and Paris hours before.
Pending confirmation of an agenda that is being kept secret for security reasons, it is assumed that the Ukrainian president will address an extraordinary plenary session of the European Parliament and will also join the leaders’ summit.
On the eve of the first anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the European leaders want to reinforce a message of support for Kiev that was already symbolically portrayed last week, when the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, a large part of her team of commissioners and the President of the European Council, Charles Michel, traveled to the country at war.
Now, the EU-27 will reiterate their commitment to stand by Ukraine «as long as it takes», Brussels stresses, not only through financial, political and military support, but also with a new package of sanctions on which they are already working – the tenth – and seeking legal formulas to finance the reconstruction of Ukraine with the resources confiscated from Russia or ensuring that those responsible will be held accountable before international justice.
Ukraine’s urgency to become a member of the European Union will also be part of the leaders’ debate at the summit, although the bloc insists that the accession process has no «shortcuts» and that, even trusting in the Ukrainian efforts to approach the European project, the times must be respected.
The EU-27 expect a first oral report from the Community Executive in the spring and a second more formal evaluation in the autumn on the progress of Zelenski’s government before analyzing the situation again.
Because of this support, the European Union was eagerly awaiting the presence of Zelenski – who has already intervened up to six times by videoconference at other EU summits – although expectations have been lowered after the Ukrainian president decided to stop by the United Kingdom first and meet on the eve of the EU-27 meeting with the leaders of France, Emmanuel Macron, and Germany, Olaf Scholz, in Paris.
European sources ask that this agenda should not be seen as a «competition» between countries but as an opportunity for EU countries to reinforce the message of their political support for Ukraine in the face of the Russian invasion, while recalling that the delivery of arms is a national competence that falls to individual governments and not to the EU as a bloc.
GREEN RACE AND MIGRATION The leaders will also ask the European Commission on Thursday to specify the measures to be carried out to counteract the ‘doping’ that other international actors such as China and the United States are injecting into its green industry and to clarify how it will arm itself and with what investments it intends to finance the Sovereignty Fund that Von der Leyen wants to have ready by this summer.
The EU-27 agree that it is necessary to take measures to ensure the competitiveness of the European Single Market on equal terms with its competitors, so they all welcome the Brussels proposal to relax state aid, accelerate investments or eliminate bureaucracy.
However, they differ with regard to the large Community fund, which poses a clash between the countries with greater financing capacity – such as France or Germany – and those that find it more difficult to distribute aid – as is the case of Greece or smaller states such as Belgium.
In this sense, Spain asks, according to diplomatic sources, that, in the event that new aid is agreed, its financing should not be obtained at the expense of national allocations or existing subsidy programs, while at the same time demanding progress in the reform of the electricity market.
Spain also insists, as do others such as the Netherlands, on the importance of flexibility being temporary and limited to key sectors, as streamlining funds may not be sufficient and may in fact have the opposite effect and distort the market.
The third key issue of the meeting of heads of state and government is migration management in its external dimension, a moment in which leaders are called upon to reflect on how to reinforce external border control, speed up deportations and count on countries of origin and transit to close illegal routes.
There is a general consensus on the need for short-term measures to deal with the reactivation of routes such as the Western Balkans or the Eastern Mediterranean, according to different sources, but countries remain divided on how to do so.
From the debate, however, no decisive decisions are expected to unblock the reform of migration and asylum policy – on the table for more than two years – because they will not go into the issue of burden sharing on asylum which generates strong divisions and, according to European sources, the most sensitive issues of the Migration Pact still require a lot of technical work before they can be dealt with at the political level.
Nevertheless, the EU-27 are called upon to show political commitment to advance in the negotiations of the Migration Pact, to speed up returns, to review cooperation with third countries and to strengthen external border control.
This, moreover, comes at a time when countries such as Austria and Greece are once again pressing for European funds to finance the construction of walls on their borders and thus curb arrivals, something that Brussels flatly rejects.
The Community Executive assumes that the installation of fixed barriers such as barbed wire or fences is a matter of national competence, within the management of each Member State of its borders, but defends that Community resources cannot be allocated for that purpose, although they can be used for other measures that help to better monitor the border crossing, such as drones or mobile posts.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
