EU leaders issue first unified call on immediate humanitarian pause in Gaza | DW News
European Council President Charles Michel said on Thursday evening that EU leaders had agreed on a strong joint statement calling for an end to the fighting in Gaza. "Strong and unified statement of EU leaders on the Middle East at #EUCO tonight!" he wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
"The EU calls for an immediate humanitarian pause leading to a sustainable cease-fire." The statement came after the leaders of the EU's 27 member states met in Brussels for a high-level summit where the war in Gaza was high on the agenda.
We have some breaking news coming in. The European Union has just called for an immediate
humanitarian pause in the fighting in Gaza and for the unconditional release of all hostages
being held by Hamas. It's the first joint EU demand for an end to the hostilities in
Gaza. The European Union heads of government said that safe and full humanitarian access
is essential in order to provide life-saving assistance to the civilian population inside
the Gaza Strip. All right, let's go to Jack Parrick now. He is at that summit in Brussels.
Jack, the EU calling for an immediate humanitarian pause in Gaza leading to a sustainable ceasefire.
That's a mouthful there. I mean, it came as a surprise or wasn't it a surprise?
It's not necessarily a surprise. We had been hearing from most of the EU countries that
this was going to be on the cards. But using the word ceasefire has been politically difficult,
especially a few months ago. The idea of calling for any kind of ceasefire was looking impossible.
But now what we've seen is that the EU leaders have progressively moved their position. The
needle on the dial has slowly ticked towards this call, which is for immediate humanitarian
pauses. This is to allow aid into Gaza with the idea of this sustainable ceasefire in
the future.
The context to this as well is that a Cypriot plan that the United States has now got behind
in the last few weeks to get aid through a humanitarian aid corridor that goes through
Cyprus means that European assets are also now moving towards Gaza. And in order for
those aid assets to get in there, the EU is now looking at this situation as somewhere
where they need to be getting the aid in and to start calling for the fighting to stop.
There's a lot going on at the summit tonight. We understand that a decision has been taken
on Bosnia-Herzegovina and its application for joining the European Union. What do we know?
Yeah, that's right. There's loads going on. What we've heard from the European leaders
is that the accession talks, so the official negotiations, will be opened at some time
in the future for Bosnia and Herzegovina. It's still a very complicated situation.
They do have to enact some reforms. That's what's in the document. But it is a very symbolic
gesture from the European Union. They want to make sure that they're sort of galvanizing
and keeping the support for those Western Balkan countries for their progression into
the EU.
And there is this thorny issue of using frozen Russian assets to boost aid to Ukraine. Did
anything happen with that?
Not really. That was the can that was kicked much further down the road. The EU said essentially
that the discussions on this and the proposals that have been put forward should be continued
to be looked at. And that is something that they could move forward with. That is the
context for this, is that around 210 billion euro odd of Russian financial assets are in
EU financial institutions accruing interest. And some EU leaders want them to be used to
support Ukraine. But at the moment, this is just a discussion that will be ongoing.
They haven't made a decision yet today.
Some decisions and some kicking the can tonight at that summit. Jack Parrott in Brussels.
Jack, as always, thank you.