← Brussels Playbook Podcast
Brussels Playbook Podcast
Why Europe still can’t agree on Israel
00:15:24
EU foreign ministers meet in Brussels as a growing group of countries push the European Commission to propose restrictions on trade with illegal Israeli settlements.
Loading summary
Transcript33 lines
- [00:00]
A
Do you want to understand the power brokers in Washington? I'm Dasha Burns, Politico's White House bureau chief and host of the Conversation. Every week I sit down with the most compelling voices driving this political Moment. Subscribe on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. Good morning. It's Monday, July 13, and this is the Brussels Playbook podcast. The vibe in Brussels today is divided as EU foreign ministers fight over whether Europe should finally move to stop trade with illegal Israeli settlements. Also on the pod, the coalition of the willing is meeting in Paris as Ukraine urges its allies to press Russia before the winter. And Ursula von der Leyen is getting expert advice on whether to restrict kids access to social media. I'm Zoya Shevtolovic and with me today is Nick Winnicker, our chief foreign affairs correspondent. Hey, Nick.
- [00:55]
B
Hi, Zoya. Good to see you in person.
- [00:57]
A
Yeah, I'm back back in Brussels after my flying visit to Australia. I'm feeling already hot, sweaty and disgusting. So thanks. Brussels. Hey, Nick. Foreign ministers from around the EU are in Brussels today and there's a meeting of the Foreign Affairs Council which is being chaired by top diplomat Kayakalas. Now, it's a huge agenda. Ukraine is on it. But actually trade with illegal Israeli settlements, that's set to be the spiciest in issue.
- [01:23]
B
Yeah. So there is a push to essentially tariff imported goods from these settlements. And this has created a kind of standoff between countries that want this and in this case, the European Commission, because the Commission was tasked with putting forward proposals. And what it came up with was an options paper with different possibilities for what to do here, but not something the countries can actually vote for. So now we have a group of countries, including Belgium, Netherlands, Spain, a handful of others that are pushing at this meeting today to form a majority to force the Commission to table a formal proposal. I know that sounds tortuous, but that is really what the story is here about, whether the Commission is really willing to do this or not.
- [02:07]
A
Yeah. And this is just to wind it back a little bit. This is to do with these illegal settlements in the west bank that have been springing up. There have been some violent settlers who have been attacking people in these areas and building these settlements. Now, the EU and other countries have said we should not allow this to go on. This is not legal, this should not be happening. But Israel, which is led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is in a coalition with these extremist far right members of government, he's sort of allowed this to happen. And so now The EU wants to respond to that. Is that basically the shape of it?
- [02:42]
B
That's exactly it. And so what we're talking about is so trade in goods, because these settlements produce, you know, agricultural goods and things like that. And the proposal is to, to impose tariffs on them, sanction them, in other words.
- [02:56]
A
And this is a pretty small thing we're looking at, right? Like that's only about half a of total EU Israel trade, less than 100 million that we're talking about here.
- [03:05]
B
Yeah. So it's a tiny sliver of the total trade and actually quite difficult to separate from overall trade. And some people call it a symbolic gesture. But, you know, the diplomats briefing were saying, well, Even if it's €1, this is a point of law, this is a point of principle. We should not be allowing it free circulation into, into the EU. There's also an international court justice ruling from 2024 saying that countries are not supposed to support these illegal settlements through trade or investment. And that's why we have the standoff today.
- [03:36]
A
And actually there is a camp in the European Council of Countries that says, actually these tariffs are not enough because it is still allowing that trade to occur. So it's one of those cases again, where there are a bunch of different camps that have formed, some saying none of these options go far enough, some saying, well, we've got to do something, anything. And then there are countries like Germany and Czechia which say, actually we don't want to do anything at all.
- [04:00]
B
Yeah. So we have reporting from Berlin ahead of this meeting saying that Germany plans to abstain or veto any kind of new trade measures that come up targeting Israel. Now, that's not even the question now because there is no proposal to vote on. And what we're hearing is quite a lot of frustration among the countries that want this, saying the Commission has done this deliberately in a way so that there can be no vote. The next Foreign Affairs Council is on until October, and then we have general elections in Israel.
- [04:31]
A
But I think that's the whole point, right? I mean, from the conversations that I have with diplomats around town, what they've been saying is we don't want to be imposing harsh measures, doing something that targets Ben gvir, who is this far right minister, and Smotrich, who's the other kind of minister, who's in the crosshairs over their support for illegal sentiments, and also various other things that they have done and said. And there is a camp that says if you take action before this election in October, then that just helps the Ben Gavirs and the Smartriches. And it actually gives them ammunition in propaganda that they can use in ads and things saying, look, we are being targeted. So there is a camp that says, hey, let's hold off until after the election when we've got a bit of clear air. Right?
- [05:16]
B
Yeah, exactly. Again, this issue, which concerns a small amount of trade and is not going to give rise to an actual decision at the FAC today, is kind of dominant. Dominating the agenda has dominated all the briefings ahead of it. Of course, we also have a push to finalize the 21st package of sanctions against Russia. We have a long lunch with countries from the Gulf Cooperation Council. Situation in the Middle east with Iran is once again getting much, much more hostile. But here we have Israel really in focus in the kind of EU discussion.
- [05:47]
A
Yeah. And also, just coincidentally, there's the meeting of the Palestine donor group happening in Brussels today as well, which the EU and the Palestinian authorities are co chairing. There's to be the launch of the Commission's new Team Gaza Initiative, where basically it's around about a billion expected for early recovery projects in Gaza.
- [06:05]
B
And the interesting thing there is you're going to have representatives from unwra, which is the UN sort of refugee aid organization that was active in Gaza, and also representative from Donald Trump's Board of Peace, both at this donor conference. And it's kind of becoming increasingly awkward for the commission to engage with both of these parties, given that the Board of Peace says that UNWRA has no role to play in Gaza's future.
- [06:30]
A
And part of the reason for that, Nick, is because the critics accuse UNRA of having links to Hamas and say they want new aid architecture in Gaza. Nick, our second story. We're still with the FAC because foreign affairs ministers are actually also going to be discussing Ukraine today. As I mentioned earlier, they're going to be having breakfast with Ukraine's Minister for Foreign Affairs, Andriy Sibiha. And over in Paris, the coalition of the willing is going to be meeting. That's the group of countries that say they will support Ukraine when it comes to the post peace period. So they're going to be joined by Volodymyr Zelensky. So let's focus in on the coalition of the willing. Nick.
- [07:13]
B
Yeah, I mean, it's an interesting one. This is the biggest gathering of pro Ukraine leaders in months. You've got the NATO Secretary General, you've got the top officials from the eu, Ursula von der Leyen and Antonio Costa, more than two dozen heads of state and government. What's interesting is this sort of the moment we're in where Ukraine is conducting deep strikes, causing fuel shortages in Russia. Russia's hitting back with ballistic missile attacks. And these leaders are really looking for seeing this as a window of opportunity to kind of bring Putin to the negotiating table and somehow transform this situation. That's what they're going to be discussing there, as well as Ukraine's immediate needs in air defense with this new offensive from Putin.
- [07:57]
A
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's super interesting, Nick. I've been covering this topic. I've got a story out today on what Ukraine has been trying to achieve over the past few months. And basically the tactic has been really hit Putin where it hurts. Get the strikes deep into Russian territory, get them into Moscow, get them into St. Petersburg. You know, just on Sunday, we saw that the Ukrainians, via drone, managed to strike a tanker in the Azov Sea. And we've seen most Russian regions, or 83 Russian regions, most of them are reporting some kind of fuel shortages. In some places, people are being told that they should be working from home because there's not enough petrol to go around. Crimea, going into this peak tourism season is suffering from fuel shortages, and tourism has absolutely plummeted. So the goal for Ukraine is, in this summer period, really hit Russia because they know that what's coming around the corner is October, when the heating season starts in Ukraine, and that's when Russians are going to be attacking Ukraine's energy infrastructure. But in any case, Ukraine currently sees that it has this advantage and it wants to force Putin to take negotiations more seriously.
- [09:05]
B
Yep. Even Donald Trump's tone toward Zelensky has become more positive in recent weeks. We had positive G7 for Ukraine, and Trump has floated allowing Ukraine to manufacture Patriot missiles inside Ukraine under license. Now, the big kind of question mark, as you were saying, is Putin, and what is he going to do? How is he going to respond? We've had more talk again of nuclear weapons from different channels, kind of proxies for the Kremlin putting that out there. And this is something that we saw at other times in this conflict when it looked like Russia had its sort of back against the wall, and there's talk of a mass mobilization. Will Putin double down here?
- [09:47]
A
It would be very risky, especially because there is a parliamentary election to the Duma in September, and so doing anything of that election would be problematic for Putin. Now, he rigs elections with the best of them, but nonetheless, you know, he. He might be a dictator autocrat, but he is a dictator slash autocrat who cares about elections. He doesn't want to have to be super unpopular, visibly unpopular, have people take to the streets and then have a parliamentary election which, you know, he accidentally wins with 97%. Like, it's just not something that looks good. And he is acutely aware of that.
- [10:23]
B
Yeah, definitely a crucial moment in this conflict.
- [10:31]
A
Nick, third story of the day. So we've talked before about how certain European governments have been starting to do things to keep kids off social media. Well, today could be kind of a more serious step in that direction because European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is getting a report that she commissioned back in March by the special panel on child safety online where they're going to be making certain recommendations when it comes to keeping kids safe. And among those recommendations could be things that look a hell of a lot like a ban.
- [11:02]
B
Indeed. Yeah. And so basically what we're saying when we say a ban is a minimum age for opening or using an account, most proposals cut it off under 15 or 16 years of age. In some cases, there's parental consent. Australia, you know about Australia.
- [11:18]
A
I certainly do.
- [11:19]
B
Introduced the first national under 16 ban. And there's a number of European countries now considering it. France, Greece, Poland, Denmark, Spain, all considering action on social media for minors under 15 or 16.
- [11:33]
A
Yeah. But we should say. So this paper that Sullivan is going to get today, it's not necessarily going to recommend a ban because there are other people who have different ideas about what would work better. So, for instance, Estonia is quite critical of a blanket restriction. Child rights groups are saying that, you know, if you ban kids from using these websites, that they're going to be excluded. Some people actually question whether bans work at all. So it's kind of complex picture. And one of the things that, for instance, happened on Friday last week, the European Commission actually found in a preliminary finding that the addictive design of Instagram and Facebook was in, in breach of the Digital Services act, which is the EU's rule book for these platforms, and said that Meta needed to change the way that the platforms work. So features like Infinite scroll and Autoplay and push notifications that these things were all kind of working to make people addicted to, to social media unable to put it down. So it's a two pronged approach. So there's this approach of like, oh, what do we do when it comes to banning or potentially banning and what do we do in other ways to make it less addictive?
- [12:38]
B
Yeah. And I like what the commissioner, Glenn McAllen, who's responsible for you, says about this, he doesn't like the word ban. He just says it's, we're just going to restrict access for younger people. It kind of sounds like a band to me.
- [12:50]
A
Potato, potato.
- [12:52]
B
He says the EU can't simply tell children to log off. It has to offer them a childhood worth logging off for. And that's where I look much closer. What? What do you mean? But it is interesting, definitely controversial. And of course we have to say it. The tech industry is up on the barricades about this.
- [13:10]
A
It sure is. But from the commission's perspective, they want to do something, because what they don't want to see is 27 different approaches in 27 different EU countries. They want to have that consistency. They want to keep the single market intact. So they're looking for something that everyone can agree to. But it is kind of complex picture in any case, because, for instance, the Australian example, when the results came in after six months of the ban being implemented, basically found that kids were working their way around it like butter, getting right around it.
- [13:40]
B
Well, you know, kids are going to do what kids do, but, you know, we still restrict access to dangerous substances even when they can get them. Right. You create some friction there.
- [13:50]
A
Yeah, absolutely. In any case, nothing's really going to happen today. This is just the presentation of this report with the various options. But we are no doubt going to see Ursula von der lion do something about this. This at some point in the future of some people, say maybe in her State of the Union speech, which is happening in September. Actually, we'd love to hear from our listeners on this one. Do you think that a ban on kids using social media would actually work? Do you want an age limit? Do you think there's something else that needs to be done? Tougher rules for the platforms? Or maybe you think no action needed at all. Let us know. The link is in the show notes. Well, that's about all we've got time for today, folks. If you haven't already, make sure you subscribe to Nick, I don't know if you knew this, but loads of our listeners who listen to us on Apple podcasts listen every day, but they're not even subscribed.
- [14:35]
B
What?
- [14:35]
A
I know. Get onto that subscribe button, folks, and give us a rating. Leave us a review, let us know what you think. Thanks so much. Bye. Hey, it's Dasha Burns, Politico's White House bureau chief and host of the Conversation. Every week I sit down with one of the most compelling power players shaping Washington and beyond. We go past the headlines and the talking points to really understand how these people think, how they make decisions, and what drives them behind the scenes. From political insiders to influential voices outside government, these are the conversations that help explain what's actually shaping this moment in American politics. Check out the conversation every Friday.