(Adnkronos) – Italy’s foreign minister Antonio Tajani is taking part in a European Union Foreign Affairs Council meeting in Brussels centred on Ukraine, especially financial support, helping the war-ravaged country meet its energy needs, and on the latest package of EU sanctions against Russia.
EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas is chairing Thursday’s meeting in which Ukraine’s foreign minister Andrii Sybiha is taking part via video link, the foreign ministry said in a statement.
The meeting “will focus primarily on Ukraine, in particular on financial and energy support for Kyiv, on sanctions pressure on Moscow in view of the 20th package of European sanctions, and on countering its shadow fleet,” said the statement.
The meeting agenda also covers the Middle East, following the UN Security Council’s approval this week of a US-draft resolution that endorses US president Trump’s 20-point plan for Gaza, an international stabilisation force for the war-wrecked Palestinian coastal enclave and its “transitional governance”, the statement continued.
The EU’s contribution to the US peace plan and the role of European missions on the ground – EUBAM Rafah and EUPOL COPPS – will be in the meeting’s cross-hairs, according to the statement.
Discussions will also look at the reconstruction of Gaza ahead of the upcoming conference hosted by Egypt on a yet-to-be-specified date, and humanitarian aid, the statement noted.
A ministerial working lunch is slated with ASEAN partners to mull “geopolitical resilience and security” ahead of the 50th anniversary of EU-ASEAN bilateral relations in 2027, the statement went on.
The meeting will wrap up with talks on Europe’s response to the dire humanitarian situation in Sudan amid the ongoing violence perpetrated in recent weeks by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in El-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, where over 140,000 civilians have fled.
Africa’s wider Sahel region is also on the agenda and ministers will debate a new strategic approach to the Sahel proposed by special representative Joao Cravinho. The ‘Renewed Approach’ blueprint follows EU disengagement in the region in the wake of military coups in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, where civilian have been imperilled by the closure of most EU military and capacity-building missions, the freezing of much development aid, increasingly brutal conflicts between Islamist armed groups and government forces and deepening repression.
