On Monday, Luxembourg Foreign Minister Xavier Bettel represented Luxembourg during Monday's EU Foreign Affairs Council in Brussels with the topics at the top of the agenda being the war in Ukraine, as well as, the ongoing wars in the Middle East with deaths continuing to occur almost daily. Luxembourg Foreign Minister Xavier Bettel made clear upon his arrival at the Foreign Affairs Council in Brussels that he has no intention of looking the other way.
"We had 35 Palestinians injured yesterday by brutal settlers", he said. "There is always someone saying we can't act [...]. I hope we can now at some point take a stand through the qualified majority. We cannot simply close our eyes. The moment something happens in Ukraine, we are all outraged. If something happens in Palestine or Lebanon, we shut our eyes, it is unacceptable."
The Ukrainian Foreign Minister was also present at the Brussels meeting. Bettel expressed relief that Hungary now has a government underway that will no longer block aid to Ukraine, though he cautioned against rushing Ukraine's EU accession process. Accession criteria, he said, must first be met.
EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas, meanwhile, flatly rejected Russian President Vladimir Putin's suggestion that former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder serve as a negotiator between Ukraine and Russia. "First, if we give the right to Russia to appoint a negotiator on our behalf, that would not be very wise", Kallas said, explaining, "and second, I think Gerhard Schröder has been the high-level lobbyist for Russian state-owned companies so it’s clear why Putin wants him to be the person, so he would be sitting on both sides of the table."
The meeting's agenda also included talks with the foreign ministers of the six Western Balkan states, with the EU reaffirming its support for their path towards accession while making clear that further reforms remain a prerequisite.
