Luxembourg, 21/06/2016 (Agence Europe) - On Monday 20 June, the Foreign Affairs Council announced that the EU was “determined, alongside our regional and international partners, to bring a concrete and substantial contribution to a global set of incentives for the [Israeli and Palestinian] parties to make peace” with a view to an international conference to be held before the end of the year, at the initiative of France.
At the end of a ministerial meeting in Paris on 3 June, the French foreign minister, Jean-Marc Ayrault, had announced that work on economic incentives, as well as on regional and security cooperation, would be launched with the aim of achieving a global package of incentives that would presented to Israelis and Palestinians at the conference.
In short conclusions, the ministers call on the European Commission and European External Action Service (EEAS) to present “proposals, including on economic incentives, without delay”. Back in December 2013, the Council had said it was ready to take an unprecedented series of political, economic and security support measures which would be offered to both parties and developed with them in the context of a final status agreement. When leaving the Council, Ayrault said that the objective, if there was an agreement, would be to give the future Palestinian state the maximum conditions of partnership with the EU - of the same type as those that exist between the EU and Israel.
In its conclusions, the Council states that the EU continues to work with the Israelis and the Palestinians, as well as with all the other actors concerned in a solution based on the co-existence of two states. “Both parties to the conflict need to demonstrate, through policies and actions, a genuine commitment to a peaceful solution in order to rebuild mutual trust and create conditions for direct and meaningful negotiations aiming at ending the occupation that began in 1967, and resolving all permanent status issues”, the EU foreign ministers warn.
Elsewhere, Israel's President Reuven Rivilin and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas will both visit Brussels, separately, this week. The Quartet report is also due to be presented in the coming days. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)