BRUSSELS, (MILLAT+APP/AFP) – The shadows of Russia
and Brexit loom over a “minefield” summit of European Union leaders in Brussels on Thursday at the end of a tumultuous year for the crisis-hit bloc.
The EU leaders will hold dinner without British Prime Minister
Theresa May where they will try to present a united front over how they handle Britain’s departure from the bloc.
They are also expected to rollover sanctions against Moscow over the
conflict in Ukraine for another six months, but are unlikely to impose any new measures in response to the carnage in Aleppo.
They will further hold crisis talks about a pact with Ukraine that
the Netherlands has threatened to torpedo if the EU refuses to offer guarantees against further integration for Kiev.
“We are treading on a minefield, there are so many issues on the
agenda that still can go wrong,” warned a senior EU European Union official.
The one-day summit, cut back from the usual two days, wraps up an
annus horribilis for the bloc that has seen it face a wave of populism including the shock Brexit referendum vote.
– Dutch Ukraine worries –
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The thorniest issue on Thursday could be Netherlands Prime Minister
Mark Rutte’s efforts to negotiate a way past a referendum in April in which his country voted against a key EU-Ukraine pact.
The Netherlands is the only one of the 28 EU states that has not
ratified the deal so far, and Rutte wants vows that the pact is not a first step towards EU membership for Ukraine, and that it will not provide defence guarantees to Kiev.
“Failure of the ratification would be a huge defeat for the EU,
Ukraine, a victory for Russia,” the senior EU official said.
Agreement will for once be far easier on the EU’s stiff economic
sanctions against Russia over the war in Ukraine, which were imposed in 2014 after the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois
Hollande will debrief leaders after which “I expect that there will be a consensus” on a six-month rollover, a German government official said.
The rollover is expected despite little appetite among some
countries, and fears that US President-elect Donald Trump is set to take take a much softer line on Moscow amid signs of rapprochement with Vladimir Putin.
The EU leaders are however set to stop short of threatening any new
sanctions against Russia over the violence in Syria’s Aleppo, where the army
has seized nearly all the ravaged city.