The European Union expands its policy of pacts. After the controversial agreements – focused on stopping arrivals to community territory – with Tunisia, Egypt and Mauritania, Brussels is finalizing a formula with a similar spirit with Lebanon, to which it will allocate a financial assistance package of between 1,000 and 1,500 million euros until 2027 , according to community sources. The Twenty-Seven are deeply concerned about the Arab country, mired in a serious economic crisis and feared that Israel’s conflict in Gaza will spread. The European financial package, which is still being adjusted and which largely includes money reallocated from other items, is expected to be announced this Thursday by the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, together with the president of Cyprus, Nikos Christodoulides, in a visit to Beirut. The amounts will be allocated to projects to try to stabilize the country and the Armed Forces, with which the EU already has assistance programs. There will also be funds for border control, indicate European sources.
The EU puts money on the table to try to stabilize the country’s situation, in a critical situation since 2019, with a collapse of more than 50% of GDP since that year. Israel’s war in Gaza and its clashes with the Lebanese Hezbollah movement (backed by Iran) in the south of the country raise fears of a repeat of the 2006 war and have put the already fragile country on the brink of the abyss.
Lebanon, with 5.4 million inhabitants, is one of the countries with the most refugees per capita in the world: 1.5 million (a quarter of the population), of which 790,000 are registered as refugees with UNHCR, the Human Rights Agency. the UN for refugees. Cyprus, the closest community country – 100 nautical miles, about 185 kilometers that are completed in about 10 hours of sailing in the Mediterranean – has seen an increase in arrivals of asylum seekers from the Arab country: so far in 2024 , has received more than 2,000 Syrians by sea, when in the same period last year there were 78.
At the last European summit, in mid-April, leaders were especially concerned about the possibility that the conflict would spread to Lebanon and that the country would end up collapsing. So they already talked about formulas to help stabilize it, support its reforms and “strengthen” the Armed Forces, a body they are trying to “empower” with this new financial injection, explains a diplomatic source.
The EU seeks to promote resolution 1701 of 2006 (which ended the war between Israel and Lebanon), which called for non-state armed groups, such as Hezbollah, to leave the south of the country and for the regular army to be deployed there. . The Twenty-Seven, the high representative of the Union for Foreign Policy, Josep Borrell, highlighted this Wednesday, also support France’s initiative to create a 10-kilometer “security zone” on the border with Israel and for this country to stop attacks on south. The EU financial agreement seeks to underpin the conditions for all this, indicates a high-ranking community source.
And, although Lebanon’s model is very specific, because the country is in a rather conflictive situation, it delves into this new community policy of outsourcing everything related to the control of migratory flows to stop arrivals to Europe. Also in the agreement for Lebanon, part of the funds are recycled or redistributed from other items. Last December, the EU announced a package of more than 205 million euros for Beirut for Syrian refugees, and European sources indicate that this amount could go within the new package. As the main interested party in calming the situation, Cyprus could also add funds, as Spain did in the migration agreement with Mauritania (500 million euros in total), one of the main departure points of the Canary Islands route.
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After the pacts with that Sahel country, with Tunisia (900 million euros) and with Egypt (7.4 billion), this one from Lebanon arrives. Already in March, the European Commissioner for Lifestyle, Margaritis Schinas, proposed extending the model to the Arab country. “We have been working with Egypt for quite some time, but I think it is absolutely realistic to act accordingly with Lebanon,” he said during a visit to Cyprus.
For the EU, it is the model to follow, despite criticism from human and civil rights organizations, which warn of the risk of sending funds to countries with regimes and governments with a disastrous record of compliance with human rights, as in the cases Tunisian and Egyptian.
The European package seeks to promote internal reforms in Lebanon, which has not met the requirements demanded by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to access its financing: in April 2022, Beirut reached an agreement in principle with that organization for a loan of 3,000 million dollars in four years that has not materialized.
The EU has granted €2.6 billion to Lebanon since 2011, including more than €867 million in humanitarian aid. As regards border management, since 2012 the EU has been funding the project Strengthening capacity for integrated border management in Lebanon (EU IBM Lebanon), worth seven million euros.
Around 20% of Syrian refugee families in Lebanon live in informal settlements or collective shelters, often in deplorable conditions. The economic crisis has pushed 3.7 million people, including locals and foreigners, to depend on humanitarian aid. Due to the depreciation of the Lebanese pound, purchasing power has dropped significantly.
Cyprus’ concerns
Von der Leyen, who is in an electoral campaign to repeat her mandate as head of the European Commission, travels to Beirut with Christodoulides to stage this support for Lebanon, but also for Nicosia. “The implementation [del paquete] “It was an initiative of President Christodoulides and Cyprus, and is practical proof of the active role that the EU can play in our region,” said the Cypriot Government spokesperson in a statement. The small Mediterranean country, with 1.2 million inhabitants, hosts some 70,000 refugees and asylum seekers, of which around 22,000 are of Syrian origin, according to the latest UNHCR data, and is concerned about the increase in irregular entries. of the last times.
At the beginning of April, Nicosia decided to suspend the processing of asylum applications from Syrian citizens, as announced by President Christodoulides, without specifying the duration of this suspension. In addition, Cyprus also took an unprecedented step by sending patrol boats to international waters off Lebanon to intercept boats, according to denounced the NGO Alarmphone. Cypriot authorities have denied these allegations. The two countries already have a bilateral agreement under which Europeans can return migrants trying to reach their coasts by sea to Lebanon.
Another measure Cyprus is pursuing is for the EU to designate parts of Syria as safe for refugees to be repatriated, an idea also supported by Denmark and Austria, even though the Middle Eastern country, which has entered its 14th year of war, is considered “not safe” by the United Nations, the EU and NGOs such as Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch.
Social unrest towards migrants has escalated in Cyprus since 2020, when various NGOs and other social groups began to report xenophobic attacks and hate speech while criticism among the population of the Government for not adopting measures to manage the arrivals of Syrians intensified.
One of the reasons for the increase in irregular arrivals from Lebanon to Cyprus is that the military escalation on the border between Lebanon and Israel has caused the authorities in Beirut to focus more on that problem and less on stopping migration, according to the Cypriot Ministry of the Interior.
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