Europe
confronts limitations at year-end summit
EU
ends 2016 with frustration, impotence and bickering over Brexit and
Greece.
By DAVID M.
HERSZENHORN, JACOPO BARIGAZZI AND QUENTIN ARIÈS 12/16/16, 1:27 AM
CET Updated 12/16/16, 1:41 AM CET
EU leaders attempted
to draw a line under an excruciatingly tough year at Thursday’s
summit by extending economic sanctions on Russia, clearing the path
for a trade deal with Ukraine and agreeing to move towards greater
military cooperation.
Such incremental
advances were overshadowed, however, by their powerlessness to halt
the Syrian bloodshed, inability to agree on common rules for
asylum-seekers and squabbling over the European Parliament’s role
in Brexit negotiations. Even the eurozone crisis made a brief
comeback in a row over Athens’ plans to give struggling Greek
pensioners a Christmas bonus.
The agenda ran over
by more than three hours, defeating European Council President Donald
Tusk’s plans for a short, efficient one-day summit. A dinner debate
on Brexit among 27 EU leaders — minus U.K. Prime Minister Theresa
May — was downgraded to a 20-minute chat.
After asking the
other leaders to consider a reciprocal post-Brexit deal on EU
migrants living in the U.K. and vice versa, May ducked out, saying “I
think I have to go now,” according to one witness.
Chagrined EU leaders
remarked on the string of ill-fated referendums that left more than a
few of them in a pickle — not just Brexit, but also a Danish
referendum to leave Europol, a Dutch referendum opposing the Ukraine
trade pact, a Hungarian referendum to reject the EU’s migrant quota
policy and an Italian referendum on constitutional changes.
“This was a day
when people were venting their frustration with referenda,” said
one senior EU official.
“Not as effective
as we would like to be”
But it was Europe’s
impotence to have any impact on the Syrian crisis that caused its
leaders to wonder if the grandiloquent, and much-wrangled-over
“conclusions” from such summits have any meaning at all.
In the conclusions
of their last summit in October, which came just after heaving
bombing of rebel positions in Aleppo, the leaders declared: “The EU
is considering all available options, should the current atrocities
continue.” This summit came against the backdrop of the fall of
Aleppo to Syrian government forces, making it plain that the EU has
few options – if any.
Tusk, at a closing
news conference, was bluntly sober about the limitations.
“To be clear,
faced with the brutality of the Syrian regime and its supporters,
notably Russia and Iran, we are not as effective as we would like to
be,” Tusk said, adding that Europe was “not indifferent” and
would keep up the diplomatic pressure for humanitarian relief.
German Chancellor
Angela Merkel expressed particular dismay, saying: “This part of
the discussion was very depressing because we’ve all seen something
that shames us and that we would really like to be able to do more
about.” Earlier EU leaders met the council leader of eastern
Aleppo, Brita Hagi Hasan, on the sidelines of the summit in a
symbolic gesture of solidarity.
“We’re not going
to go to war with Russia,” a senior aide to Tusk said. “In the
context, our options are quite limited.”
EU foreign policy
chief Federica Mogherini rejected any suggestion of imposing new
sanctions on Russia for its military support for the government of
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
“This is not been
the approach the Council has chosen in its last session,” Mogherini
said. “We are working in these hours, as I said, trying to use our
influence and our leverage, especially with Iran, in these moments,
and trying to support the work of the United Nations to try and focus
on the protection of civilians.”
Ukraine deal
Instead, European
leaders formalized their decision taken at the last summit in October
to extend existing sanctions on Russia for the annexation of Crimea
and its military intervention in eastern Ukraine.
With Donald Trump
soon to be inaugurated in the White House, this may be the last time
Russian sanctions get rolled over without a struggle. Trump’s pick
of Exxon Mobile CEO Rex Tillerson for U.S. secretary of state will
raise questions about the sanctions, which several EU countries have
previously pushed to have lifted.
Even the advance
toward the deal with Ukraine, a clear success on Thursday, could
prove short-lived. The EU’s free trade agreement with Ukraine, at
the heart of the turmoil that led to the ouster of President Viktor
Yanukovych in 2014, had been put at risk by the Dutch vote.
EU leaders said they
had addressed the concerns of Dutch voters, including a statement
that the trade pact and accompany political association agreement
would not automatically put Ukraine on a path to EU membership.
With such slow
progress during the summit that the “working lunch” didn’t end
until 6.21 p.m., perhaps the most serious setback was the bickering
over the European Parliament’s role in formal Brexit negotiations,
which are expected to begin in April. MEPs, feeling sidelined,
threatened to open their own direct negotiations with the U.K. until
it was agreed that there would be some room for consultation with
Parliament.
A Greek bonus
Meanwhile, Greek
Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras sought to build support at the summit
for his decision to spent €617 million in one-off benefits for
poorer pensioners, including a Christmas bonus. Public support for
Tsipras and his government has fallen as it has implemented the tough
austerity program required as a condition of the EU rescue program.
Tsipras’ pension
bonus plans infuriated officials at the European Stability Mechanism,
which is administering the rescue program and said it would suspend
Greek’s short-term debt relief as punishment. French President
François Hollande suggested a compromise, insisting Greece should be
“treated with dignity” and was entitled to some “sovereign
decisions,” according to one EU diplomat.
The leaders also
heard from NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg who secured their
support for greater military cooperation, including between the EU
and NATO.
Harry Cooper, Maïa
de la Baume, Florian Eder, Tom McTague, Paul Taylor and Ryan Heath
contributed to this article.
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