Africa-Press – Eswatini. European Union (EU) foreign ministers are in Brussels to discuss continued support for Ukraine, analyze a way to reduce tensions in the Middle East and reframe relations with Africa.
The informal meeting, titled Gymnich after the first meeting, 50 years ago at Gymnich Castle Erftstadt, in Germany, starts at 9:30 am local time and the Portuguese Minister of Foreign Affairs, João Gomes Cravinho, will participate in the meeting.
Practically two years after the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the EU 27 diplomats will assess the support provided to Kiev and analyze how they can resolve the gaps that persist, namely the inability to deliver artillery ammunition in a timely manner.
In March 2023, the EU committed, also during a Gymnich meeting, to designing a plan to deliver by March 2024 one million 155mm ammunition to Ukraine, which are the most used by the Ukrainian infantry and the weapons it has. to try to repel Russian forces in occupied territory.
However, by November 2023, the EU had only achieved just over 30% of the objective and at the beginning of this year, minister João Gomes Cravinho himself admitted that the European bloc was going to fail the promise it made.
The focus has changed, however, and now the 27 have committed to the same figure but until the end of the year.
At the same time, the incentive to produce and buy more ammunition is to replenish the storage of EU countries, depleted since the start of the war in Ukraine, to meet the needs of the Ukrainian army.
The joint purchase of ammunition is a viable path, but several diplomatic and Defense sources have insisted that strengthening the industrial capacity of each country is equally or more important.
Tensions in the Middle East, reignited with the Israeli military incursion into the Palestinian territory of the Gaza Strip, will also be the subject of discussion among governments, namely a way to ensure a ceasefire, even though there are countries that prefer a different terminology, such as “humanitarian pauses”, and also the funding that some EU countries, such as Germany, have cut to the United Nations agency that supports Palestinian refugees (UNRWA).
The alleged involvement of some employees of that agency in the attacks carried out by the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas in southern Israel on October 7th is the reason for the suspension of funding from some European countries, despite the EU (as an institution) having indicated that, for now , will continue to support.
The decision of some countries was indirectly criticized by the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs, Josep Borrell.
The Gymnich meeting, which takes place as part of the Belgian semi-annual presidency of the EU Council, will also address the reframing of EU-Africa relations.
The Belgian presidency wants to move forward with the conclusions of the last summit between the two regions, in February 2022.
At a time when external groups, such as Wagner’s mercenaries, are gaining weight on the African continent, the EU wants to look at a pole that can bring benefits in political-economic cooperation, but also be a problem if other actors on the international scene, namely Moscow and Beijing, seen as competitors of Brussels, get ahead of themselves in the region.
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