EU leaders fail to back calls for humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza

European Union leaders failed to back calls for a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza at the end of a crunch summit despite Taoiseach Leo Varadkar saying an “overwhelming majority” of countries were in favour.

The two-day European Council meeting in Brussels concluded on Friday with no new stance agreed on the war in the Middle East. Senior sources confirmed that there was no fresh text tabled during the meeting despite earlier calls from Ireland and other countries to call for a ceasefire.

Mr Varadkar said he had hoped there could be a significant shift in the European position from the previously agreed stance in October, when the council called for “humanitarian corridors and pauses”.

“The position of the overwhelming majority of the EU countries now is that there should be a ceasefire,” Mr Varadkar said.

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However, no new conclusions were reached. Instead a blocking minority prevented the EU calling for a humanitarian ceasefire.

In an unusual move the EU leaders decided to make no mention at all of the conflict in their joint conclusions, with several countries feeling that if there was no reference to a ceasefire it was better not to say anything at all.

“My view and the view of others is that if we couldn’t get unanimity on calling for a ceasefire there was no point in coming up with some sort of interim language – ‘rolling truces’ or ‘on and off pauses’,” the Taoiseach said. “We would have been here for many, many hours, and probably would have only come up with compromise wording that nobody would have been happy with.”

[ UN warns of spiralling hunger levels as Gaza is hit with communications blackout ]

Ahead of the summit Ireland had joined Belgium, Spain and Malta in issuing a joint call urging the EU to demand a ceasefire, and in a United Nations vote this week 17 EU member states backed a ceasefire while two voted against.

Speaking after the conclusion of the summit, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said the “immediate priority” was to deliver as much humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip as possible. “There can be no peace unless there is the prospect of a political solution, both for Israelis and Palestinians. And this is the two-state solution.”

The EU also agreed on Friday to move towards sanctioning people who give financial support to Hamas, and asked foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell to draw up a proposed list of extremist Israeli settlers to be sanctioned over violence towards Palestinian communities in the West Bank.

The Taoiseach said Mr Borrell would draw up a list of violent settlers “who would be banned then from travelling to Europe” although he said there was “still some work to be done on that”.

While leaders celebrated a “historic” breakthrough at the summit on Thursday after it was agreed to open accession talks with Ukraine and Moldova, there was no agreement on the future EU budget and a proposed €50 billion funding package for Ukraine which would extend out until 2027. A special summit to agree these specific measures will likely be held in the new year.

The financial package was blocked by Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban in a move which delivered another blow to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy after he failed this week to persuade US politicians to approve an additional €55 billion, mainly to buy weapons from the US.

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