European Union

Declaration by the High Representative on behalf of the European Union on the alignment of certain third countries with Council Decision (CFSP) 2022/582 of 8 April 2022 amending Decision 2014/145/CFSP concerning restrictive measures in respect of actions undermining or threatening the territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence of Ukraine

Declaration by the High Representative on behalf of the European Union on the alignment of certain third countries with Council Decision (CFSP) 2022/579 of 8 April 2022 amending Decision 2012/642/CFSP concerning restrictive measures in view of the situation in Belarus and the involvement of Belarus in the Russian aggression against Ukraine

Declaration by the High Representative on behalf of the European Union on the alignment of certain third countries with Council Decision (CFSP) 2022/578 of 8 April 2022 amending Decision 2014/512/CFSP concerning restrictive measures in view of Russia’s actions destabilising the situation in Ukraine

Media advisory - "Supporting the future of Syria and the region" - Brussels VI Conference, 10 May 2022

European Union co-legislators reached an agreement on the Digital Services Act (DSA), flagship legislation that will reign in the digital sphere and step up the fight against illegal content and disinformation.

Written by Sebastian Clapp.

NATO has condemned Russia’s war on Ukraine in the strongest possible terms, and calls it ‘the biggest security threat in a generation’. The Alliance calls on Russia to cease hostilities immediately, withdraw all its forces from Ukraine and work towards a peaceful diplomatic solution. To avoid direct confrontation with Russia, NATO has made clear that it will not deploy forces to Ukraine, which is not a NATO member, nor will it enforce a no-fly zone over Ukraine. The delivery of weapons and equipment to Ukraine (by individual NATO Allies) and the imposition of unprecedented sanctions are being organised predominantly outside the NATO framework. In order to deter further Russian aggression and reassure its Allies, NATO has substantially enhanced its own deterrence posture, with large deployments of troops and equipment to the eastern flank of the Alliance’s territory.

NATO response to Russia’s war on Ukraine

Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, NATO held three extraordinary meetings within a few weeks: meetings of defence ministers, and foreign ministers – both with the participation of partners – and an extraordinary NATO summit. NATO leaders called the Russian war on Ukraine the ’gravest threat to Euro-Atlantic security in decades’ and condemned the invasion in the strongest possible terms. They stressed that Russia must immediately stop the invasion and withdraw its forces from Ukraine. Allies reiterated their resolve in countering Russia’s attempts to destroy the foundations of international security and stability, and to defend its 30 Allies and ‘every inch of Allied territory’. NATO reiterated that it is united and resolute in opposing Russian aggression, and underlined its iron-clad commitment to Article 5, the Alliance’s collective defence clause. The Alliance also condemned Russia’s decision to recognise the separatist regions of eastern Ukraine, and emphasised that it stands with the people of Ukraine and its legitimate, democratically elected president, parliament and government. Allies called on Russia to engage constructively in credible negotiations. NATO also reaffirmed its commitment to NATO’s open door policy. In December 2021, Moscow had issued demands in the form of draft security pacts to the United States and NATO, demanding NATO pull back troops from eastern Europe and cease its open door policy for future members, including Ukraine, which the US and NATO rejected.

NATO support measures for Ukraine following the Russian war on Ukraine

The delivery of weapons and military equipment, as well as the imposition of sanctions, is taking place outside the NATO framework. NATO has repeatedly emphasised its role as a defensive alliance, and that it is not seeking a war with Russia. It has ruled out enforcing a no-fly zone over Ukraine, which would risk the crisis escalating and spilling over into a wider European conflict involving NATO Allies, or even potentially leading to World War III, although experts believe that the latter is unlikely. NATO has also reiterated that it will not deploy forces to Ukraine. At the same time, NATO has warned Russia that it must stop its ‘nuclear sabre-rattling’ and that any use of chemical weapons will have far-reaching consequences. NATO’s strategy has thus been ‘a careful balancing of its defensive mission, its credibility and the need to avoid escalation’. NATO says that it is assisting in the coordination of requests for assistance and supporting Allies in the delivery of humanitarian and non-lethal aid, however details on this are unclear. NATO has also repeatedly expressed support for the delivery of weapons and military equipment to Ukraine by individual NATO Allies. Allies such as the United Kingdom, United States, Canada and EU Member States have provided Ukraine with weapons and equipment. Following a tasking from NATO leaders, at the meeting of foreign ministers on 6-7 April, NATO agreed to further strengthen and sustain support to Ukraine. Allies agreed to do more when it comes to weapons and military support. NATO committed to enhancing practical support to regional partners, including Georgia (e.g. on cyber and situational awareness) and Bosnia and Herzegovina (new defence capacity-building package), but also to increase practical and political cooperation with Asia-Pacific partners (Australia, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand) on issues such as countering disinformation and cyber-threats. Ministers agreed that NATO’s next Strategic Concept (adoption of which is planned at the Madrid Summit in June 2022) must set guidelines for NATO’s future relationship with Russia and provide a roadmap for the Alliance’s adaptation to a more volatile and competitive world.

NATO relations with Ukraine
Ukraine is not a NATO member. While NATO had assured Ukraine in 2008 that it would one day join NATO, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy recently acknowledged that Ukraine will not seek NATO membership, a fact that has been ‘implicitly true’ for a long time, due to opposition from several NATO Allies stemming from a fear of escalating tensions with Russia. In fact, Ukraine was never offered a Membership Action Plan, a key step in the NATO accession process. Despite this, NATO maintains its open-door policy, as any reversal on the matter would breach its founding treaty (Article 10), violate the principles of the European security order and assign blame to NATO enlargement for escalating tensions. Relations with Ukraine date back to 1991, when it joined the North Atlantic Cooperation Council. In 1994, Ukraine joined Partnership for Peace, a practical bilateral cooperation programme with NATO. In 1997, the NATO-Ukraine Commission (NUC) was established, to oversee Ukraine’s ‘Euro-Atlantic integration process’. Under its direction, areas of cooperation include, inter alia, building capabilities, including cyber, interoperability measures, training, security and defence reform and exercise participation, with the aim of enhancing Ukraine’s ability to defend itself. Ukraine actively contributes to NATO-led operations and missions: most recently Ukrainian special forces were commended for their role in evacuating 96 Ukrainians and Afghans at high risk from Kabul. In recognition of its strong commitment to NATO, Ukraine became one of six Enhanced Opportunities Partners (alongside Australia, Finland, Georgia, Jordan and Sweden) in 2020, granting it enhanced access to interoperability programmes, exercises and information-sharing. NATO deterrence measures within the Alliance

NATO has significantly enhanced its defence and deterrence measures in response to Russia’s war on Ukraine, through the deployment of elements of the NATO Response Force, a multinational rapid-response force. As a result of substantial reinforcement by NATO Allies, there are currently 40 000 troops under direct NATO command stationed on the eastern flank of the Alliance. Additionally, 130 allied fighter jets and 140 allied ships are in the region, as well as national deployments of troops and weapons by Allies, including the UK, the US, Canada and European allies. Most significantly, US deployments of troops and equipment, such as Patriot missiles, to Europe have been stepped up, with 15 000 more US soldiers since February 2022, bringing the number of US troops stationed in Europe (including western Europe) to a total of 100 000. At the extraordinary NATO Summit on 24 March, leaders agreed to form four further multinational battlegroups, in Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia, bringing the total to eight. This deployment constitutes the ‘biggest reinforcement of Alliance collective defence in a generation’. NATO’s rapid reinforcement strategy ensures that these can be strengthened quickly. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg recently announced that NATO is working to transform the Alliance’s presence in the east to a large, permanent military presence. NATO had already decided in 2014 to enhance its deterrence posture in the east, following Russia’s annexation of Crimea. And at the 2016 Warsaw Summit, it decided to increase NATO’s forward presence on its eastern flank, an important component of NATO’s deterrence and defence posture and reassurance measure. In 2017 the first four multinational battlegroups were deployed to Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.

European Parliament position

In an extraordinary plenary session, on 1 March, addressed by President Zelenskyy, Parliament adopted a resolution in which it noted that NATO remains the foundation of the collective defence of the Member States who are NATO allies, and welcomed the unity of the EU and NATO in facing Russian aggression. Parliament encouraged the strengthening of NATO’s enhanced forward presence on the eastern borders, and underlined the need to increase NATO’s collective deterrence posture, preparedness and resilience. Parliament welcomed the activation of NATO’s defence plan as well as the activation of the NATO response forces and their partial deployment in addition to troop deployments from NATO Allies. Parliament encouraged Member States to increase defence budgets, develop more effective capabilities and fully utilise joint EU efforts to strengthen NATO’s European pillar, which increases both NATO and EU security. In 2021, Parliament had adopted a resolution on EU-NATO cooperation, in which it welcomed the intensified cooperation with NATO since the 2016 Warsaw Joint Declaration and 2018 Brussels Joint Declaration, and emphasised that a strong EU-NATO partnership is vital to address the security challenges faced by both organisations. The EP also called on the EU to keep deepening its important partnership with NATO, and noted that, for Member States that are NATO Allies, NATO remains the cornerstone of collective defence.

Read this ‘at a glance’ on ‘Russia’s war on Ukraine: NATO response‘ in the Think Tank pages of the European Parliament.

As the war in Ukraine nears the end of its second month, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has reported continued challenges in accessing healthcare and delivering emergency aid to some of the hardest-hit areas of the conflict, issues that were also discussed by MEPs this week.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned that Russia's invasion of his country was just the beginning and that Moscow has designs on capturing other countries, after a Russian general said it wants full control over southern Ukraine.

EU negotiators agree on landmark rules to effectively tackle the spread of illegal content online and protect people's fundamental rights in the digital sphere.
Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection

Source : © European Union, 2022 - EP

EU negotiators agree on landmark rules to effectively tackle the spread of illegal content online and protect people's fundamental rights in the digital sphere.
Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection

Source : © European Union, 2022 - EP

While the war in Ukraine continues, French farmers are permitted to cultivate fallow land in order to increase production. The question now is whether the direction of the new Common Agriculture Policy (CAP) will also be affected. EURACTIV France reports.

Written by Magdalena Psikowska-Schnass.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine aims to deny the sovereign country its right to a distinct identity. Indiscriminate shelling is seriously damaging Ukraine’s cultural heritage. International law sets rules to limit civilian deaths and destruction of cultural heritage, both are war crimes that the international community will need to address.

War in Ukraine: Saving innocent lives, and cultural heritage as an identity factor

When Russia invaded sovereign Ukraine on 24 February 2022, it claimed spiritual and cultural justification. However, Russia had already invaded eastern parts of the country in 2014, resulting in the illegal annexation of Crimea. Since then, Ukraine has been striving to protect its United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) world cultural heritage site in occupied Crimea, the ancient city of Tauric Chersonese and its 5th century BC Chora. Ukraine’s cultural heritage already suffered huge losses during World War II, when the Nazis carried out looting and destruction.

Cultural heritage in illegally annexed Crimea
The peninsula is rich in cultural heritage and has been subject to politically motivated interventions and russification of its history. There has been unlawful transfer of artefacts to Russia and illegal archaeological excavations, the findings of which have been exported to Russia or sold on the black market. The unique cultural heritage of Crimean Tatars has been destroyed and biased conservation works have obscured its origins. Threat to UNESCO world cultural heritage sites and cultural institutions in Ukraine

For weeks, Russian troops targeted Kyiv, home to UNESCO cultural heritage site Pechersk Lavra and Saint Sophia Cathedral. Besides sites in Kyiv and Crimea, the UNESCO list includes Lviv’s old town and three other sites (see map). Seventeen further sites are candidates for inclusion, featuring on UNESCO’s tentative list. Among them, the historic centre of Chernihiv, Kharkiv’s skyscraper, Derzhprom, the archaeological ‘Stone Tomb’ site, have all been affected by heavy fighting. As the frontline moves, other sites, such as the historic centre of Odesa and the Mykolayiv astronomical observatory, face serious danger of destruction.

Map: UNESCO cultural heritage sites, and cultural losses in Ukraine

However, the destruction of cultural sites across the country provoked by the Russian war has so far spared the western regions. The international press reports UNESCO’s preliminary list of cultural losses by the end of March 2022 included 29 religious sites, 16 historic buildings, 4 museums and 4 monuments. The Holocaust Memorial Centre in Drobitsky near Kharkiv, where the Nazis killed thousands of Jews, is among them. The Ivankiv Historical-Cultural Museum, north of Kyiv, was destroyed on 28 February 2022. The fate of its collection of 25 paintings by Ukrainian folk artist Maria Prymachenko, praised by Picasso and Chagall, is unknown.

International concerns and conventions

Crimes against human life and crimes against culture ‘are simply two different stages in the same violent process of ethnic cleansing and genocide’. The 1954 Hague Convention set rules for the protection of cultural property from destruction and looting during armed conflicts. Russia and Ukraine are both parties to the Convention. The text established a blue shield as an easily identifiable sign of immunity attributed to cultural property. The notion of intentional destruction of cultural property as a war crime is further developed in the 2017 UN Security Council Resolution 2347. This text was a reaction to cultural destruction carried out by Islamic State.

War crimes against cultural property
Armed groups intentionally destroyed the mausoleums at Timbuktu, a UNESCO cultural heritage site, and burned their manuscripts in 2012, during the occupation of northern Mali. Since then, the peacekeeping forces’ mandate also includes the protection of cultural heritage. In 2016, the International Criminal Court (ICC) convicted the perpetrator, who recognised his responsibility, and sentenced him to nine years of imprisonment and €2.7 million in reparations. The EU contributed to the reconstruction of the mausoleums.

UNESCO’s Director-General has stated that Ukraine’s cultural heritage must be safeguarded, ‘as a testimony of the past but also as a catalyst for peace and cohesion for the future, which the international community has a duty to protect and preserve’. Its Committee for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict held an extraordinary meeting on 18 March 2022 to discuss the situation. The Committee granted preliminary financial assistance of US$50 000 for emergency measures, such as in situ protection and the evacuation of cultural property. The committee also envisaged the potential inclusion of some of Ukraine’s cultural heritage property on the International List of Cultural Property under Enhanced Protection, established by the 1999 Second Protocol.

Efforts to duly display a blue shield emblem, identify needs for material and skills support to shield buildings and statues from shelling, protect artefacts from damage and move them to museum cellars or safe havens have intensified. International bodies and specialists in cultural heritage preservation hold regular online meetings to discuss technicalities. As a result, on 9 March 2022, an appeal from the newly established Centre to Rescue Ukraine’s Cultural Heritage in Lviv enumerated material and financial needs.

Many countries and cultural institutions have answered the call for assistance. Nemo, the Network of European Museum Organisations, provides information about available support from across Europe for Ukrainian museums and their professionals. The Committee for Aid to Museums of Ukraine was established by 26 Polish museums, to help secure their collections and provide support. The Nordic Museum in Stockholm has started a fund to provide finance for the National Museum of Ukrainian History in Kyiv. France, the Netherlands and Italy sent tonnes of much needed materials.

The digitisation of collections is a way to preserve cultural works for the future. The Europeana platform issued a statement of support for Ukraine and displays digitised collections of Ukrainian cultural heritage. Saving Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Online (SUCHO), a group of more than 1 300 librarians, archivists, researchers and programmers, are working together to identify and archive at-risk sites, digital content, and data in Ukrainian cultural heritage institutions.

Under the French Presidency of the Council of the European Union, culture ministers, deeply concerned about preservation of cultural heritage, unanimously adopted a declaration on the situation in Ukraine on 7 March 2022. In June 2021, the Council recognised the role of cultural heritage for peace and called for its protection during armed conflicts and its integration into the EU toolbox for conflicts and crises.
The European Parliament’s Culture and Education Committee hosted a debate on 15 March 2022 on how Russia’s biased interpretation of history denies Ukrainian identity.

Read this ‘at a glance’ on ‘Russia’s war on Ukraine’s cultural heritage‘ in the Think Tank pages of the European Parliament.

France has said Russian mercenaries were burying civilian dead in makeshift graves near a French army base in Gossi, Mali, and claiming via proxies on social media that French forces had committed a massacre. "It is representative of multiple information attacks French soldiers have faced for several months," the French military staff said, AFP reports. MPs in Niger started voting Friday on letting French soldiers relocate there to fight jihadists.

A Russian general, Rustam Minnekaev, said Friday according to Russian newswire Interfax, Russia wanted to conquer Ukrainian land all the way to Moldova, where Russophones were being persecuted — a pretext previously used for invasions. "Control over the south of Ukraine is another way out to Transnistria, where there are also facts of oppression of the Russian-speaking population," he said, prompting speculation if the threat was real or propaganda intimidation.

The Russian embassy in Iceland has singled out an EU Commission spokesman for criticism, saying Friday that "Peter Stano cynically declares the European commitment to a diplomatic settlement of the situation and claims that more weapons [to Ukraine] do not mean more war". It said Iceland should expect "negative consequences" for allowing 13 cargo flights of Western arms shipments to Ukraine and said cargo entering Ukraine was a "legitimate target".

EU companies may be able to comply with Russia's proposed system to pay for gas in roubles without braking the bloc's sanctions against Moscow, the EU Commission said Friday, but it is not yet clear how that procedure would work. Moscow proposed that energy buyers open accounts at Gazprombank, where payments in euros or dollars would be converted to roubles, which might comply with the EU's sanctions regime, Reuters reported.

Health commissioner Stella Kyriakides reaffirmed support for the European Medicines Agency (EMA)'s set of recommendations for antimicrobials to be reserved for humans only despite criticism over the non-inclusion of colistin, an antibiotic used in veterinary medicine.

The European Commission is leading talks on a waiver of intellectual property (IP) rights on COVID vaccines and treatments. However, critics from the pharmaceutical industry argue that changes to the current IP system could jeopardise research and development in their sector.

On 21 April 2002, I was 18 years old and my friends and I were about to vote for the very first time. And not just in any election, we were going to vote in the presidential election.

‘Frexit’ may be off the menu offered by Marine Le Pen ahead of Sunday’s crucial presidential run-off against incumbent Emmanuel Macron but the threat of a seismic shift to France’s position in Europe looms large ahead of polling day.