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| Europe |
| Deeply divided EU puts conditions on Ukraine for the first time |
| 2023-07-02 |
| Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. by Evgenia Kondakova [REGNUM] On June 29-30, a summit of leaders of the European Union took place in Brussels. And although the Union itself and its individual countries are experiencing a lot of various problems, nevertheless, the main focus of the summit agenda was shifted outside the EU. TOPIC #1 Immediately The very first session of the first day of the summit was dedicated to Ukraine. The invitation to the event, sent by European Council President Charles Michel to the leaders, said that amid ongoing hostilities and the destruction of the Kakhovka hydroelectric dam, the EU must reaffirm its commitment to support Kiev through continuous financial and military assistance. And it will take a long time to pay - Europe, according to German Chancellor Olaf Scholz , proceeds from the fact that the Ukrainian conflict will not end soon. Before the summit, EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell promised to double aid to Ukraine and suggested that the European Peace Fund would become Ukraine's Defense Fund. Although, as noted by the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry , Maria Zakharova , commenting on this idea, it has long become the European War Fund. Initially, the fund was created in 2021 to finance tasks aimed at maintaining peace, preventing conflicts and strengthening international security, but after the start of the NWO, the funds from it were redirected to the purchase of weapons for Ukraine. And the European Commission a week earlier appealed to the EU member states with a call to contribute another €50 billion for Ukraine to the general EU budget, which, as the agency itself reported, was fully exhausted ahead of schedule, and this is no less than €1 trillion. In this regard, the Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban repeated the question countless times: “Where is the money?” "Just 2 years after the adoption of the 7-year budget, Brussels is running out of money. How so? What happened to the budget? Where is the money, European Commission?" the politician wrote on Twitter, illustrating with a GIF image of the confused hero John Travolta from the movie Pulp Fiction. In an interview with the Hungarian radio station Kossuth, which he gave on the sidelines of the EU summit on June 30, Orban stressed that over the past 1.5 years, the EU has already provided Ukraine with € 70 billion, and where this money went, it is not known how it is unclear who will control the funds and where they will go. The head of the Hungarian government is sure that the European Commission has no chance to get an additional €50 billion from the EU countries. "There is no money in the EU budget. Where did this money go? We know the answer: they were issued to Ukraine for a war that should not have happened," he said. Asked if EU bailouts would bring peace to Ukraine closer, Orban said he disagreed with the approach of the big players who say that if you keep giving money, Ukrainian soldiers will fight and defeat the Russians. "A year and a half has passed, we have done what we have done, the result is zero, even negative. Russia is not defeated, the Russian political leadership is in place, the Russian economy is doing well, and we are suffering from high inflation, and we have no money to support the Ukrainians. Obviously, the counteroffensive launched by the Ukrainians is difficult, and there are serious doubts that we can hope for anything at all," he stated. Orban stressed that he belongs to a different school - one that is convinced that negotiations are needed, and not the continuation of hostilities. WHERE TO GET MONEY The EU does not have its own money for Ukraine, but there is a temptation to give it other people's funds, "squeezed out" illegally - the frozen assets of the Russian Federation. European officials have long been looking for a way to transfer Russian funds for the needs of Kyiv, but in vain - there is no legal mechanism. In addition, this issue causes disagreement among EU members: large states, in particular Germany, fear that ill-conceived actions could undermine the confidence of foreign investors and provoke their withdrawal from the European financial market. The European Central Bank has also warned about such risks. Following the results of the first day of the summit, the Prime Minister of Belgium, on whose territory 90% of the frozen Russian assets are located, Alexandre de Croo announced the EU's intention to use the excess profits from investing these funds of the Russian Federation to help Ukraine and expects an income of at least €3 billion a year. There is no talk of confiscation of assets, the bottom line is that companies receive excess profits from investing Russian funds, and it is taxed. According to The Guardian sources, lawyers recognized such a move as legally acceptable, and the proposal can only be approved after it has been discussed with the UK, the US and Japan. However, the EU must be able to return the assets to Russia at any time, so it is necessary to find an opportunity to earn more from these funds than interest plus the frozen assets themselves. The Financial Times warns that if the assets lose their value, they will have to be reimbursed by European taxpayers. What the leaders of the countries, of course, do not want. As a result, no progress on this issue was achieved by the EU, they agreed to work further, and the European Commission, according to President Ursula von der Leyen , will make a proposal to use the windfall profits from Russian sovereign assets. THE CONCEPT HAS CHANGED According to a French diplomatic source Agence France-Presse, on the sidelines of the summit on the morning of June 30, representatives of France, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, Poland, Romania, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Belgium held a meeting to discuss the consequences of a possible enlargement of the EU at the expense of Ukraine. It is quite obvious that now (and in the near future) they will definitely not be accepting into their ranks a country on whose territory hostilities are taking place, which actually exists only on money from outside. Apparently, the Europeans decided to calculate everything in advance, so that later there would be no unpleasant surprises, in what position the EU found itself after the admission of Ukraine. At the same time, the European Union is considering providing Ukraine with security guarantees, which, as the Financial Times specified, include funding, arms supplies, training of military personnel and the transfer of intelligence. However, not all EU countries want to make any long-term commitments with respect to Kyiv, moreover, Austria, Ireland and Malta asked to take into account their neutral status, which does not imply the provision of military assistance. However, they themselves have long discredited themselves by joining all the packages of anti-Russian sanctions. And although the postulate “to help Ukraine as much as needed” has not been canceled, in the final document of the summit, European leaders for the first time outlined the conditions for further support to Kiev and significantly changed their position on a number of aspects: 1. The initial thesis about the readiness to “assume obligations to ensure the security of Ukraine for the long term” in the final version began to say that the EU member states are ready to consider options for such obligations, and only together with international partners. With whom exactly, it is not specified, but this number may include NATO, whose Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg also participated in the summit. 2. European officials for the first time put forward a condition for the continuation of military assistance to Ukraine: it should not harm the interests of the EU countries themselves and run counter to the national policy of individual European countries in the field of defense and security. The inclusion of this clause for the EU leadership can be a way to calm those countries that are dissatisfied with unlimited spending on Ukraine to the detriment of their own national security, and for the member states themselves a way to distance themselves from military assistance to the Armed Forces of Ukraine against the background of already depleted stocks of weapons and the lack of success of the Ukrainian army on the field fight. 3. The EU has indicated the need to continue stable, predictable and sustainable financial support for Ukraine (again in cooperation with international partners), but there is no mention of any € 50 billion that the European Commission so much wanted to receive from EU members. 4. The rhetoric regarding the “peace formula” of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has also changed markedly: instead of the previous unconditional support for all 10 points of the plan, the EU now supports only key principles and goals. 5. EU leaders allowed for new peace initiatives to resolve the crisis, proving that they must be based on full respect for the independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine within internationally recognized borders (i.e. with Crimea, Donbass, Kherson and Zaporozhye regions) . It is curious that no exceptions to the option of freezing the conflict are mentioned, although recently European politicians have said that this is unacceptable. 6. The participants of the summit condemned the deliberate destruction of the Kakhovskaya hydroelectric power station, but did not indicate the perpetrators, and after all, immediately after the accident, without trial or investigation, many blamed Russia, however, as always. EVERYONE THINKS ABOUT RUSSIA There was no Russian theme in the initial agenda of the summit, but the events of June 24 made their own adjustments. In the midst of an attempted armed rebellion undertaken by the founder of the Wagner PMC, Yevgeny Prigozhin, European officials unanimously said only that they were monitoring the situation, this was an internal affair of Russia, and they had nothing to do with what was happening, as if they clearly followed the instructions sent out by the US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken to American diplomats around the world. Nevertheless, already at the end of the events, the West continues to study what really happened then, and the German Federal Intelligence Service (BND) even launched an internal check to find out why the German services were not aware of the impending rebellion, although the United States was aware in several days. And yet, statements about the split and weakness of Russia, the destruction of the myth of its indestructibility have been and continue to be heard. Even in the invitation to the summit, Charles Michel wrote: “Our unshakable unity contrasts with the disunity in Russia demonstrated by the events of this weekend.” French President Emmanuel Macron could not resist commenting publicly, saying that "the insurrection in Russia shows the divisions that exist within the country, the fragility of its army and auxiliary forces." However, in someone else's eye you see a straw, but in your own you do not notice the beam. Two days before the opening of the summit in Nanterre, a suburb of Paris, police officers killed a teenager of Arab origin from service weapons who violated traffic rules and refused to stop the car at the request of patrolmen. This provoked protests in different parts of the country. And yet, the French president did not refuse a trip to Brussels and even managed to go with his wife to an Elton John concert, for which he was immediately criticized by citizens. But the unrest reached such proportions that the leader of the Fifth Republic had to urgently fly to Paris on June 30, canceling the final press conference in the Belgian capital in order to hold a meeting of the crisis headquarters. Macron's absence from EU summits is an extremely rare event, BFM TV channel noted. Russian officials such as Dmitry Medvedev, Sergei Lavrov and Maria Zakharova make tongue-in-cheek comments on the matter, comparing the events of the Wagner uprising and the riots in France to Macron's remarks on the matter. NOT A SINGLE RUSSIAN-UKRAINIAN CONFLICT And yet, one should not think that the entire summit was devoted exclusively to the Ukrainian conflict and the situation around it. In Brussels, European leaders also held a discussion on relations with China. As a result, the EU confirmed a multifaceted political approach to China: it is simultaneously seen as a partner, as a competitor, and as a systemic rival. “Despite different political and economic systems, the EU and China have a common interest in developing a constructive and stable relationship based on respect, based on the rules of the international order, balanced interaction and reciprocity,” the document says. However, even when talking about China, Europeans again return to Ukraine. The European Union intends to actively cooperate with China on climate issues, solving health problems, food security, humanitarian aid and other important international challenges. And the main challenge now is the Ukrainian crisis. And the EU countries called on China to put pressure on Russia, its close ally, to immediately and completely withdraw troops from Ukraine without preconditions. Of course, there was also an intra-European agenda - the summit of EU leaders, after all. The problem that has been acute for the community for many years, but the solution is still not approaching, on the contrary, the situation is only getting worse, is the migration crisis: since 2022, millions more newcomers from Ukraine have been added to refugees from African and Middle Eastern countries. The idea of distributing guests across all EU countries in accordance with quotas has long and completely failed, and it is impossible to find a really effective mechanism. So the current meeting in Brussels did not bring success. “At the EU summit, 27 member states failed to reach consensus on a European asylum policy due to resistance from Hungary and Poland,” DPA reported. According to Orban, EU countries have previously managed to come to an agreement on various issues, but "migration has deeply divided them." "We will be able to adopt any rules only if everyone agrees, there will be a unanimous decision. But through a series of swift, putsch-like actions, supporters of migration pushed through the proposal to establish migration quotas at the council of the heads of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Hungary and Poland voted against to the end, and several countries abstained, which can be regarded as a soft "no," the Hungarian Prime Minister said. In general, the EU summits are not the same anymore: instead of deciding how to make life better for Europeans, life becomes more fun, the leaders of the countries are discussing the situation in Ukraine, which is not even a member of the union and will not enter soon, if at all, vying to repeat anti-Russian theses, knowing full well that the imposed sanctions have not worked. They themselves chose the role of an obedient vassal of the United States, implicitly executing orders from across the ocean, terminating deals that are beneficial to them and silently bringing ammunition for the Armed Forces of Ukraine. And no one other than the European leaders themselves is to blame for this. |
| Posted by:badanov |