After a nearly five-year suspension of direct collaboration between the Burundian government and the European Union, a high-level political dialogue was launched Tuesday with a view to restoring relations with the EU and its member states.

The two delegations met in Bujumbura on Tuesday and were led by Ambassador Albert Shingiro, Burundian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Claude Bochu, European Union envoy in Burundi.

The resumption of exchanges between the two delegations also saw the participation of Ambassadors of the European Union member states in Burundi.

According to a joint statement released by the delegations, the resumption of political dialogue constitutes a shared priority that will benefit the people of Burundi and Europe.

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The delegations agreed to work together towards restoring relations.

‘’I am delighted with the spirit of openness and mutual trust which characterised the resumption of political dialogue. The exchanges took place in a constructive environment with the ultimate goal being to get concrete results as soon as possible,’’ tweeted Ambassador Shingiro.

Both parties recalled that Burundi and the member states drawn from the European Union are historical partners anxious to strengthen their bonds of friendship and cooperation.

This comes days after President Evariste Ndayishimiye, held a ceremony with members of the diplomatic community accredited to Bujumbura where he reaffirmed the will of his government to strengthen the bonds of cooperation with friendly countries and partners.

In 2016, the EU suspended all direct funding to the Burundian government for failing to meet EU concerns over its human rights record, including the loss of over 400 lives.

Unrest erupted in Burundi, a landlocked African country, in 2015 against a decision by late President Pierre Nkurunziza to run for a third term, which the opposition said was illegal.

With an aid package worth some €430 million ($520 million) for the period 2015-2020, the EU is Burundi’s biggest donor.

The Ndayishimiye-led administration has been hailed for opening up the East African country to regional investors and the international community.

Christian Nibasumba, Burundi representative of Trade Mark East Africa said he was encouraged to see the high-level political dialogue between Bujumbura and the European Union with a view to resuming good ties.

The EU has raised concerns over Austrian plans to set a minimum airfare, a spokesman said, weighing in on an environmental policy debate that pits traditional airlines against low-cost carriers.

A minister from Austria’s Greens, the junior partner in the governing coalition, announced plans last June for a €40 minimum fare that explicitly targeted no-frills operators.

The European Commission “expects to receive more detailed information from the Austrian authorities on the precise content of the envisaged measures,” the spokesman for the EU executive told Reuters on Wednesday (3 February).

The Austrian environment and transport ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Faced with pressure for higher airline taxes to curb greenhouse gas emissions, flag carriers like Lufthansa and Air France-KLM have argued instead for minimum fares that could all but abolish much of the low-cost market.

Austria unveiled its proposal after granting €600 million in aid to Lufthansa-owned Austrian Airlines.

But a “pricing freedom” provision within the European Union’s main 2008 air services regulation states that airlines “shall freely set air fares” for flights within the bloc.

“The Commission supports measures to promote the greening of aviation, and of transport in general, which are compatible with the internal market rules,” the EU spokesman said.

“As always, the Commission will verify whether the new measures are in line with EU common rules and, if necessary, will engage a dialogue with the Austrian authorities.”

Air France and its pilot unions protested on Wednesday (3 February) against EU demands that the airline give up takeoff and landing slots at its Paris base in return for government aid.

Brussels wants the French airline, part of Air France-KLM , to cede 24 Orly airport slots as a condition for approval of a state-backed recapitalisation, La Tribune reported this week.

“We wouldn’t understand being subjected to drastic measures that weaken our position in Paris,” Group Chief Executive Ben Smith told L’Express magazine in an interview – adding the slot demands could give low-cost Ryanair a foothold at Orly.

The SNPL pilot union accused the EU in a statement of seeking to “destroy the efforts of Air France employees”.

Battered by the coronavirus pandemic, many traditional airlines have received government aid under European Union guidelines that temporarily relax state aid rules.

In return for its €9 billion bailout last year, Germany’s Lufthansa reluctantly gave up 24 slots at each of its main hubs, Frankfurt and Munich – or three flights a day for four competitors’ aircraft at each base.

The EU executive and French government have declined to comment on discussions under way about Air France bailout terms.

Under the plan submitted to Brussels, France would swap a €4 billion shareholder loan granted to Air France-KLM last year for hybrid debt or perpetuities, lightening the group’s debt burden, according to French media reports confirmed to Reuters by company and government sources.

The Dutch government, which formally resigned last month but remains at work ahead of March elections, has yet to say whether it will take part in the recapitalisation or convert its own €1 billion loan to KLM. The two governments each own close to 14% of the airline group.

But appearing before a parliamentary committee on Wednesday, Dutch Finance Minister Wopke Hoekstra said some KLM slot concessions at Amsterdam Schiphol seemed inevitable as the EU seeks to “keep a level playing field” among member states and companies.

“So it’s reasonable to expect that remedies will be part of the solution,” Hoekstra said. “You can see in the Lufthansa case what you can roughly expect.”

Portugal’s defence minister, João Gomes Cravinho, held a videoconference with his German counterpart and the Slovenian secretary of state on Wednesday (3 February) to take stock of “developments in European defence policy”.

The presidency trio comprises the current presidency of the Council of the EU (Portugal) along with the previous (Germany) and the next (Slovenia).

According to a statement issued by the ministry of defence, this meeting took place around a month before an informal meeting of defence ministers, scheduled for 2-3 March in Lisbon, under the Portuguese presidency.

Cravinho, Germany’s Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, and the Slovenian Uroš Lampret discussed the developments related to the Strategic Compass, the EU strategy for maritime safety and transatlantic relations.

The ministers said they want to deepen the dialogue on the Strategic Compass, “based on the first EU threat analysis”, to identify concrete steps to move the process forward and ensure the participation of the 27 member states.

Presented by EU defence ministers in June 2020, the Strategic Compass covers three phases: a threat analysis of the EU, the establishment of strategic objectives to strengthen the EU as a security and defence actor, and the creation of political guidelines for military planning procedures.

The communiqué said that “possible measures allowing a rapid operationalisation of the initiative in the Gulf of Guinea”, defined by the EU as the first Maritime Zone of Interest of the Union, were also discussed, following the adoption of the Coordinated Maritime Presences by the Council of Foreign Ministers.

Concerning transatlantic relations, the trio of presidencies examined a number of topics which will be addressed at the next meeting of defence ministers, in particular the relationship with the new US administration under President Joe Biden, and the European Union’s relationship with the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO).

Measures for the new European Peace Facility “to train and equip partners in training missions” were also discussed.

Some 59% of French citizens do not see the prospect of the Western Balkans countries’ EU accession in a positive light, a new study has found. But it also revealed increasing mistrust toward the bloc overall.

Albania, North Macedonia, Montenegro, and Serbia are official candidates for EU membership, the latter two already engaged in accession talks for several years, while Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo are considered potential candidates.

Although none of the six Western Balkan countries is close to joining the EU, the report, conducted by the Open Society Foundations, found that more than one French in two opposes the EU enlargement toward that region.

While 49% believe that the enlargement to include Montenegro, for example, would be a bad thing, the study emphasised that as many as 76% of the respondents were negative about Turkey, which is also an EU candidate.

“Do the French have a grudge against Kosovars, Albanians or Bosnians? It would be too simplistic to say that. It’s rather that they don’t really care,”  Srđan Cvijić, one of the authors of the study, told EURACTIV France.

“The Balkans are a bit of a scapegoat,” added Sébastien Gricourt, director of the Balkan Observatory for the Jean Jaurès Foundation, who also participated in this study.

In fact, nearly one in four respondents said that their life would not be impacted much, if at all, by such an enlargement.

Distrust toward the EU

However, it seems that French people’s negative attitude toward the Balkans somewhat reflects their opinion of the EU institution as a whole.

“The reflex that the French have for enlargement is in fact the reflex they have for the European Union,” Gricourt explained.

The French are among the Europeans who have the least confidence in the EU. The study showed that 62% of those in favour of Balkan accession had a good image of the EU, while more than one in two (55%) disagreed.

In addition, there is also an element of ignorance at play.

“When shown the map of Europe with the current member states highlighted, many participants were surprised that the countries of the Western Balkans are not already part of the EU,” the report said.

A vacuum for extreme-right to step in

Skopje and Tirana have made substantial progress on reforms in the last two years, but Paris has insisted that no green light for the official start of EU accession talks should be granted.

The French government has primarily opposed Albania’s accession, and this had a spill-over effect on North Macedonia as well.

French President Emmanuel Macron stressed at the 2018 Sofia Summit that in order to have a stronger and more united EU, “we also need to modernise the EU and the eurozone, and for me, this is a prerequisite for further membership.”

For Gricourt, the whole discussion over the Balkan region’s EU future should be “de-politicised”.

He recalled that the question of Serbia’s potential accession to the EU had been put to the twelve candidates heading the lists for European Parliament’s election in a televised debate in April 2019. Only two candidates, Raphaël Glucksmann and Jean-Christophe Lagarde, were in favour.

Gricourt warned that instrumentalising enlargement is a strategic mistake because “we are leaving the field to the extreme right”.

In order to avoid this trend, the expert said, more education was needed to explain the accession process, the many criteria and achievements required before a country is allowed to join.

Interestingly, 43% of the respondents appeared to have changed their mind during the various stages of the study, Cvijić explained.

[Edited by Sarantis Michalopoulos, Zoran Radosavljevic | EURACTIV.com]

Half of Afghans need humanitarian aid but rising violence is preventing deliveries, a senior European Union humanitarian official said on Wednesday (3 February), reiterating calls for a ceasefire between the Afghan government and the insurgent Taliban.

The European Commissioner for Crisis Management Janez Lenarčič visited Kabul to announce the EU will provide €32 million for humanitarian projects in 2021.

“Increasing violence and conflict is the main cause for the humanitarian need in this country,” he said. “We very much hope and call for an immediate, unconditional and comprehensive ceasefire.”

Violence has risen in the war-torn nation, dashing hopes that a US-brokered peace process in Doha would reduce conflict while the Afghan government and the Taliban negotiated a political settlement.

Even during the usually subdued winter months, fighting has taken place around the country along with a wave of assassinations of government officials and civil society members.

On Wednesday a blast in Kabul killed a police officer, and unknown attackers killed a religious leader in the southern city of Kandahar and a judge in the eastern city of Jalalabad.

Lenarčič called on the government and the Taliban “to understand that allowing for full and unimpeded humanitarian access is their obligation under humanitarian law.”

Lenarčič said that the amount of the EU’s humanitarian aid could rise. Those funds are separate from the $12 billion over the next four years that foreign donors including the EU pledged in November.

The European Union and its member states should draw the consequences of the current stalemate in multilateral talks aimed at reforming the Energy Charter Treaty and consider a coordinated withdrawal, Paris has said in a letter seen by EURACTIV.

Signed in the early 1990s to protect oil and gas companies from political risk when investing in the former USSR, the treaty has since been decried as outdated by the EU, which wants to reinstate its “right to regulate” and align the treaty with its international climate obligations.

However, negotiations have been slowed down by the treaty’s requirement to take decisions by unanimity. And despite three rounds of talks held last year among the 54 signatories, not much progress has been made.

“In the absence of decisive progress on the reform of the Energy Charter Treaty in 2021, all consequences should be drawn,” says the letter, sent to the European Commission in December, ahead of the third round of talks.

“The option of a coordinated withdrawal of the European Union and its member states should be raised publicly from now on, while its legal, institutional and budgetary modalities should be assessed,” it adds.

The missive – showing France’s growing impatience with the slow progress in the reform talks – was signed by four French ministers and state secretaries involved in the Energy Charter Treaty negotiation: Bruno Le Maire (economy and finance), Barbara Pompili (ecological transition), Franck Riester (external trade) and Clément Beaune (European affairs).

“After two years of preparatory discussions, between 2017 and 2019, and three formal rounds of negotiations in 2020, it is clear that the process of modernising the ECT is not on track,” the ministers write.

“The current dynamics of the discussions are not likely to produce results for several years” and the EU’s objectives in the talks are “far from being achieved,” the letter states.

In 2019, EU countries gave the European Commission a mandate to revise the treaty, saying it must reinstate Europe’s “right to regulate” in areas like climate change and workers’ rights.

But those objectives are not shared by all the 54 signatories to the Energy Charter Treaty, which includes countries like Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, and Uzbekistan, all highly reliant on fossil fuels.

“Not all Contracting Parties seem to share European ambitions in the field of the fight against climate change,” the four French ministers wrote, pointing out that the EU’s willingness to “exclude fossil fuels from the scope of the modernised ECT” is currently opposed by countries whose economies remain dependent oil, gas and coal.

Other aspects of the reform also appear to be in a dead end. At the last negotiation round in December, Japan refused to revise the most controversial aspect of the treaty – the investor-state dispute settlement mechanism – which refers litigations to private tribunals where judges are nominated by the parties in the dispute.

Instead, the EU has proposed to refer cases to a future “Multilateral Investment Court”, which is currently being negotiated at UN level.

In their letter, the French ministers found it “regrettable” that no progress has been made on reforming the ECT’s arbitration system. Talks at UN level are likely to drag on for many more years, the letter said, calling this prospect “unsatisfactory”.

Together, the EU and its 27 member states account for more than half of the 54 contracting parties to the ECT, the ministers underlined, saying this is “a considerable lever that should be exploited now by sending a strong political signal to the other states” in the treaty.

“At the next Energy Charter Conference, the European Union and the member states should collectively express their serious concerns about the conduct of the modernisation process and indicate that, in the absence of decisive progress in 2021, all consequences should be drawn.”

> Read the full letter below or download here.

Letter_France_ECT

[Edited by Zoran Radosavljevic]