There’s a lot going on at the moment. The leaders of the EU’s 27 states sit down in Brussels today as the world watches to see if the ceasefire between Israel and Iran will hold and avoid a destabilising war in the Middle East.
Over the 12 days where Israel and Iran traded barrages of missiles, and the United States entered the fray to bomb three Iranian nuclear sites, the European Union was more of a bystander than a political player.
Talks last Friday in Geneva between the foreign ministers of Iran, France, Germany and Britain, plus the EU’s top diplomat, appeared blindsided by US president Donald Trump’s decision to bomb Iran that weekend.
The repeated calls from European leaders for dialogue and de-escalation did not seem to carry much weight, and it was the US who brokered a truce with the help of Qatar.
The Iran-Israel flashpoint is just one of multiple fronts where the EU has struggled to exert influence.
A growing group of EU states want firm action from the EU, to push Israel to let supplies and aid flow into the decimated Palestinian enclave.
It has spent months fighting about how to pressure Israel to ease its blockade of food and aid getting into Gaza.
Germany and several other EU states have advocated a softly, softly approach. They want to keep raising concerns about the grave humanitarian conditions privately with the Israeli government. That clearly has not worked.
A growing group of EU states want firm action from the EU, to push Israel to let supplies and aid flow into the decimated Palestinian enclave.
Brussels loves its procedures and processes. A review that confirmed Israel had breached human rights obligations during its 20-month invasion of Gaza was seen as a precursor to any sanction on Israel.
Foreign affairs ministers were in town earlier this week to discuss the findings of that report. Kaja Kallas, the EU’s foreign affairs chief who chairs those meetings, was a bit watery on what will happen when speaking to journalists afterwards.
Belgium, Ireland, Spain and others are hoping options will be put on the table when foreign ministers get together again in mid-July. Options could include suspending an EU-Israel free trade deal, cutting Israeli access to EU research funding, sanctioning Israeli ministers or restricting trade from occupied Palestinian territories.
Some diplomats fear the timeline for an EU decision is already beginning to slip, due to a lack of appetite to move against Israel from Kallas and European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen.
Kallas said she would first take the findings of the EU review to Israel. “If the situation does not improve, then we can discuss further measures and come back to this in July,” she said.
Given the recent spotlight on the Middle East, you could nearly forget there is a war being fought on the EU’s doorstep. Russia appears as bullish as ever and has been hitting Kyiv with some of the largest aerial bombardments since the start of its full scale invasion three-and-a-half years ago.
The EU has provided huge amounts of military and financial aid to help keep Ukraine in the fight, but still found itself without a seat at the table during preliminary – and so far inconclusive – truce talks between Ukraine, Russia and the US.
A lot of this trails back to the Trump administration’s decision to pull the US away from its long standing allies, which has left the EU isolated. The new relationship is now much more transactional.
Navigating that changed world order would be easier if all 27 national governments were broadly aligned
A European plan for “massive” economic sanctions on Russia has stalled due to a lack of buy-in from Trump. The summit of EU leaders on Thursday will instead try to get agreement for a more routine round of sanctions to hinder Russian president Vladimir Putin’s war effort.
“One of the big questions the whole of the world and Europe is tackling, as traditional allies, is how to deal with the US administration that has become much more uncertain, unpredictable and which has broken some of the traditional principles that made our alliance,” one senior EU official said this week.
Navigating that changed world order would be easier if all 27 national governments were broadly aligned on the big issues, but they’re not.
Hungary’s far-right prime minister Viktor Orban will probably once more refuse to add his name to a joint statement at the end of the EU leaders’ summit, reaffirming support for Ukraine.
EU foreign policy decisions need unanimous agreement, and other leaders have been unable to solve the problem presented by Orban’s obstruction.
It will become a real headache if he follows through on threats to block new EU sanctions on Russia, or refuses to renew existing ones. A big row is brewing.
In the new political reality where US foreign policy can shift in the time it takes Trump to write a Truth Social post, the EU machine seems very ill-equipped to respond.
