In Brussels, Syria has returned to the forefront of European political debate. Eight member states have suggested reviewing the European strategy towards the country governed by Bashar al-Assad and a his Russian ally, Vladimir Putin. The aim is to promote a more pragmatic approach that takes into account the central issue of refugees.
In the midst of the regional crisis, with Houthi attacks reaching as far as Tel Aviv and the Israeli response hitting Yemen, the attention of the Twenty-seven is aimed at avoiding military escalation.
The proposal , signed by Italy, Austria, Czech Republic, Cyprus, Croatia, Greece, Slovakia and Slovenia, insists on the need to recalibrate the bloc's approach to the Eastern Mediterranean country, aiming for "a more active and operational Syrian policy".
The main objective would be to increase the political influence and the effectiveness of EU humanitarian assistance, which suggests discussing "openly and without prejudice" a dozen of topics listed in another text, not yet public. One of the proposals of the eight chancelleries would concern the introduction of a special EU-Syria envoy, to resume diplomatic relations with Damascus (in synergy with other regional partners).
Among the results that the signatory countries would like to obtain, there would appear to be some kind of agreement for the management of migratory flows. This strategy, increasingly consolidated in the EU, aims in externalizing European borders by delegating the control of the movements of refugees and asylum seekers to third countries, as it was done with Turkey in 2016, or with Libya, Tunisia, Egypt and other states in the North African and the Eastern Mediterranean arch. On the one hand, it would facilitate repatriations to Syria, and restrain the number of departures towards Europe.
Furthermore, Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani stressed that "Syria cannot be left in the hands of Iran and Russia", echoing his Austrian counterpart according to whom "the Assad regime remains firmly in the saddle, the Syrian opposition is fragmented or entirely in exile and the EU can no longer turn a blind eye to this reality".
Is that a strategy to distance Damascus from Moscow and Tehran, redrawing the boundaries of political influence in the Middle East? For sure, it is an ambitious plan, but its accomplishment seems rather unlikely at the moment. The violations of human and civil rights perpetuated by the Assad regime against its own citizens are too serious, as are the war crimes committed on a large scale in over a decade of bloody conflict against "rebel forces" (including the Kurds, first supported and then abandoned by Westerners) and ISIS militants.
The summary of the head of EU diplomacy discussions was succinct: it will be necessary to "be pragmatic, but not naive", which could be translated: it is possible to work with the Syrian regime, if there is room for manoeuvre.
The EU has not definitively pulled the plug on its attention to the Levantine country, but it is undeniable that there is not the same sense of urgency that there was in recent years, in the light of the civil war and the waves of migration that affected the Old Continent. Last May, in Brussels, the eighth edition of the Conference on Syria was held, where international donors announced commitments for 7.5 billion euro, of which 2.12 from the bloc for the two-year period 2024-2025.