EU commissioner reiterates claim that Palestine aid is suspended

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Good morning. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy will be in Brussels today to join a meeting of Nato defence ministers, where continued support for Ukraine will top the agenda.

Today, I hear from the European commissioner at the centre of an EU omnishambles over the status of continued aid to Palestine, while our Balkans correspondent reports on the Black Sea bonhomie on display during Zelenskyy’s visit to Romania yesterday.

‘No payments’

The European commissioner who sparked a Brussels communications debacle over whether to keep sending development aid to Palestine has doubled down on his insistence that funds are suspended, and warned that an audit was required to make sure there was no “indirect” financing of terror group Hamas.

Context: The EU is Palestine’s biggest external donor. Hamas controls the Palestinian territory of Gaza, from where it launched its deadly attack against Israel this weekend, killing at least 1,200 Israelis. At least 900 people have been killed in Israel’s retaliatory attack on the exclave. Israel meanwhile said it had retrieved the bodies of 1,500 Palestinians who had stormed Israeli territory.

Olivér Várhelyi, who as neighbourhood commissioner oversees the EU’s relations with neighbouring countries, said on Monday that funding would be “suspended”. After a backlash from countries including France and Spain, the commission then clarified that aid would be “reviewed” but that “no payments [are] foreseen”.

“I do not see any contradiction,” he told the FT yesterday when asked about the commission’s clarification. “To me, it’s the same . . . there are no imminent payments.”

The communication shambles has exposed the fractures inside the commission and the lack of co-ordination on critical issues. At an emergency meeting of EU foreign ministers yesterday, France’s Catherine Colonna referred to “inappropriate behaviour” by the commission, according to people briefed on the discussion.

Várhelyi, from Hungary, is one of the commission’s most prominent supporters of Israel. He made his initial “suspended” statement with the understanding that he had backing from the commission’s executive, according to two officials briefed on the discussions.

A commission spokesman yesterday said Várhelyi had not spoken to any other commissioners about the issue before making the statement.

Josep Borrell, the EU’s foreign affairs commissioner, yesterday said “the overwhelming majority of member states” have called for no delays to aid payments to Palestine.

But Várhelyi thinks the risks are too high.

“We’re in the middle of a war where it seems that we have a very strong Islamist terrorist organisation emerging in a territory where we are the biggest donor,” Várhelyi said. “Having seen what has happened, we cannot not check [the funding] again, to see whether we have not been used and abused.”

“I don’t think that there is any direct financing [of Hamas]. That I would exclude, because, we have very strict rules,” Várhelyi said. “Now, what we don’t know yet is what about this indirect . . . financing. And there we have to dig deep.”

“We have seen many indirect ways of financing. We have tried to crack down on those related to our funds. And I hope that on the ground we have been successful,” he added.

Chart du jour: Slick moves

Oil prices have dropped again following a recent spike probably provoked by the crisis in Israel. In fact, the impact of the current conflict on oil prices has been muted.

Reaching out

Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited Romania yesterday to shore up a budding special relationship with its Black Sea neighbour, forged in the fire of Russia’s full-on assault on Ukraine, writes Marton Dunai.

Context: Russia has backed out of the Black Sea grain deal that once allowed Ukraine’s farm output to reach world markets. Kyiv has bypassed the blockade via ports along the Danube delta and links to Romania, provoking Russian drone attacks on riverine ports, which have sometimes fallen on Nato-member Romania’s soil.

After meeting his Romanian counterpart Klaus Iohannis, Zelenskyy called Bucharest a “strategic partner” — a huge contrast with the fraught relationship the two countries had before the war. He added: “We are ready to build exactly this level of relations.”

Romania once disputed Ukraine’s ownership of Snake Island in the Black Sea. It also slammed Kyiv’s dredging in the Danube delta to bypass Romanian shipping routes at a great environmental cost, and its treatment of the Romanian minority in Ukraine. But that’s all in the past.

Now, it is all about security co-operation in the Black Sea, where Russian drones and naval mines have wreaked havoc. Romania has said it supports Ukraine’s plan for peace, and wants to co-operate on creating transport links connecting Ukraine with the rest of Europe across the Balkans.

Efforts to keep things smooth were such that after a far-right senator threatened to make a scene during a planned speech by Zelenskyy in parliament, the Ukrainian president’s speech was cancelled.

“I have not prepared any speech, with all due respect,” Zelenskyy said. “But next time, I will.”

What to watch today

1. Nato defence ministers meet in Brussels.

2. EU parliament holds ceremony to commemorate victims of Hamas’s attack on Israel.

Now read these

• Arch rivals: In upcoming Polish elections, a historical feud between Poland’s de facto leader Jarosław Kaczyński and candidate Donald Tusk comes to a head.

• Mysterious hole: Finland is investigating whether sabotage caused a leak in a Baltic Sea gas pipeline and damage to a data cable connecting it to Estonia.

• Media manipulation: Czech energy minister Jozef Síkela has accused billionaire Daniel Křetínský of using his newspaper to attack him.