By Manal Abdel fattah
President Nikos Christodoulides stressed that the EU needs to find a common line regarding the situation in the Middle East, and expressed his dissatisfaction with the inability of the leaders to arrive to joint conclusions on the issue, in statements upon arriving to the meeting of the special European Council held on Thursday in Brussels.
Regarding the situation in the Middle East, the President said that Cyprus, together with Greece and other member states, “insisted on the need to discuss this issue because it was not on the agenda of the discussions.”
“I have already criticized the fact that there will be no conclusions. It shows our weakness as a European Union on an issue that is in our neighbourhood,” he said.
“Unfortunately, as the European Union we have different approaches on this issue, although I believe we can all agree on the need to end this unacceptable state of affairs and begin the political process to resolve the Middle East problem” he stressed, expressing hope that through the discussion there will be agreement on “some common ground”, which the President of the European Council could convey after the end of the meeting.
Pointing out that the EU should not focus only on Ukraine, President Christodoulides added that he fully understands the stakes but “at the same time we have a situation in our neighbourhood with very serious implications for the European Union”, and that it would be possible to agree on written conclusions “if there was the necessary political will and patience”, and added that it is regrettable that “some states did not even want the discussion.”
