The socialist politician Josep Borrell, former high representative for Foreign Affairs of the European Union, who alludes to who took his witness in the current Ursula von der Leyen Commission. This is her successor in office and new head of community diplomacy as well as vice president, the Estonian Kaja Kallas.
Borrell has displayed his usual ironic but diplomatic style to portray the ups and downs that have marked politics in Brussels in the last week, as a result of the position on the US and Israel’s war against Iran. Von der Leyen not only surprised with an intervention in which she assured that “not a single tear should be shed for the Iranian regime”, also in order to forge new rights or as guarantor of the basic principles of international law.
“We need a system of global governance based on rules. Of course, the United Nations system must also be rethought. And when traditional formats prove inoperative, it is up to us to find creative ways to resolve the most serious crises of our time,” said the president of the Commission, in 24 hours, which caused fissures in the socialist part of the community Executive. Above all, embodied in the figure of the president of the Council, the Portuguese António Costa.
Kallas, who had been showing a lukewarm position regarding the condemnation of US-Israeli aggression, also came out yesterday to clear up any doubts and respond to Donald Trump’s demand to create an international fleet to protect oil tankers and cargo ships in the Strait of Hormuz. , but after having confirmed that “no one wants to actively participate in this war” and that “our priority is détente and freedom of navigation.”
“I’m glad”: a cut with irony and pulling from Pedro Sánchez
In statements upon his arrival to participate in an event at the Madrid Business Forum, Borrell told the press about the turn that took place in the Commission. He has left a message for Kallas – with whom it is clear and public that he does not agree with part of his policies and his management of the position -, in the form of an ironic cut. “I’m glad you discovered it,” he said, referring to the phrase that “this is not Europe’s war.”
Borrell also took the opportunity to remember that there were no fissures when it came to condemning the military campaigns of Washington and Tel Aviv as far as the Spanish position was concerned, which was an allusion to Pedro Sánchez. “The Spanish position is the correct one and Sánchez has done very well from the beginning. In other words, we cannot afford this war,” he argued.
It should be remembered that the tug of war between Kallas and Borrell goes back a long way and has a lot to do with another conflict in the Near East and the Middle East, Israel’s interventions and occupations of the Palestinian enclaves of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Kallas, upset by comparisons of her tone with Tel Aviv and Borrell, went so far as to say that . He also stated that Borrell’s ways were not the way to achieve anything from Israel: “You can be more forceful with the language, but then Israel stops talking to the EU, just as happened with my predecessor.”
“What does this stronger language achieve? Will we get them to stop killing if we use stronger language and put proposals on the table that the Member States are not going to approve?” asked Kallas, who in the form of the partial suspension of the EU association agreement with Israel. Days after Kallas’s reflection, Borrell described the pressure measures on the Israeli Government as a “joke” and was crystal clear: .
