The European Union is gearing up for a week of intense debate over a series of key foreign policy issues. EU foreign affairs ministers will meet on Oct. 17 amid a heated discussion within the bloc about slapping more sanctions on Russia for its role in the Syrian conflict. The meeting comes less than a week after the foreign affairs ministers of Germany, France and Italy announced that sanctioning Moscow was not high on their list of priorities. But leaked conversations published in several European newspapers suggest that some EU members are mulling the option of banning travel by Russian officials and freezing their assets for their links to airstrikes in Syria. The United Kingdom has also publicly advocated the consideration of new sanctions.
Russia will likewise be one of the primary topics during an Oct. 20-21 summit for EU heads of state. In July, the European Union extended its sanctions against Moscow in response to a lack of progress in the Ukrainian crisis, but some members (Italy, Hungary and Slovakia, to name a few) demanded that a formal debate on the future of EU-Russia relations be held before the sanctions expire in January 2017. Though it still seems unlikely that the bloc will pile on new sanctions, members that want to defend a tough approach toward Moscow may try to link the Ukrainian and Syrian crises to justify keeping the ones already in place.
Immigration will also rank high on the summit's agenda. The bloc's deal with Turkey, intended to prevent asylum seekers from reaching EU shores by way of the Aegean Sea, is still being enforced. But it might not be for much longer. Many EU members have refused to honor the commitments they made to Ankara because they disapprove of the Turkish government's crackdown on the political opposition. The bloc is also concerned about the possibility of economic migrants traveling to Italy through North Africa, and it will be seeking ways to tighten border controls and increase aid for the migrants' countries of origin.
Next week's meetings will give EU members a chance to discuss the bloc's controversial free trade agreement with Canada as well. So far, member states have sent mixed signals about the deal. On Oct. 13, the German Constitutional Court rejected a legal challenge to the agreement, and a few hours later, the Austrian government announced that most of its concerns about the accord had been eased. But on Oct. 14, the parliament of Belgium's Wallonia region voted to block the deal. (The European Commission recently authorized some regional parliaments to vote on the agreement alongside their national counterparts.)
EU members plan to sign the accord during an EU-Canadian summit on Oct. 27. But even if the bloc's governments endorse it, the deal will still have to be ratified by the European Parliament and 38 national and regional parliaments. That process could stretch well into 2017, and lawmakers in several states may try to veto it. Though the European Commission's legal experts have said that parts of the agreement could be introduced on an ad hoc basis, the future of the deal as a whole is far from certain.
