Tim Van der Heyden

🇪🇺 In Luxembourg today for a full agenda at the Foreign Affairs Council with my European colleagues. 🔹 Ukraine remains at the top of the agenda. Belgium has allocated an additional €100 million to the PURL programme. I urged all colleagues to ensure Ukraine continues to have the financial means to sustain its resistance. We also need to move quickly to consolidate the €90 billion loan, unlock the 20th sanctions package, and advance on enlargement. And we must stay vigilant about the signals coming from Belarus. 🔹 Sudan cannot be forgotten. It is one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world right now, yet it is slipping off the agenda. I raise the question of whether the EU's equidistant approach to the belligerents is really the most effective, or whether we need to step up, including through sanctions, if we want to genuinely influence the outcome. 🔹 On the South Caucasus, I recently spoke with my counterparts in Azerbaijan and Armenia. A peace agreement is within reach. We need to provide both political and economic support to anchor these countries firmly in the European dynamic. 🔹 Belgium remains concerned about the situation in the Middle East. Hezbollah must be condemned for dragging Lebanon into a war it did not want, but that does not justify what follows. Israel's disproportionate and indiscriminate response is unacceptable. I welcome the first direct dialogue between Israeli and Lebanese authorities in decades. The people of both countries deserve to be able to live in safety. It was at my suggestion that High Representative Kaja Kallas invited the Lebanese Prime Minister for an exchange today. 🔹The situation in Palestine deteriorates by the day. Settlement expansion, settler violence at unprecedented levels, the adoption of death penalty legislation. Belgium has been calling for months for at least a partial suspension of the EU-Israel Association Agreement. The attacks on the values that underpin that agreement are now too serious to ignore. It is time to put this back on the table. 🔹I will also brief my colleagues on my mission to the Balkans and on the geopolitical importance of keeping the prospect of EU membership alive for these populations, in the interests of collective security, prosperity and stability. @BelgiumMFA @BelgiuminEU

Germany sinking into economic ruin, riven by ethnic conflicts. What could possibly go wrong…