The High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Josep Borrell, announced on Monday 12 July, at the end of the Foreign Affairs Council, a political consensus among ministers on the creation of a sanctions regime against Lebanese leaders accused of wait-and-see behaviour.
“The Lebanese need a government [...] that implements reforms and guarantees the interests of the population. Ministers have reached a political agreement on the need to establish a sanctions regime against those responsible” for the current stalemate, the High Representative explained, expressing surprise that Europeans were more concerned about the Lebanese political situation than the Lebanese leaders themselves.
According to Mr Borrell, the aim is to adopt the regime by the end of July, less than a year after the terrible explosion in the port of Beirut on 4 August. He promised that the sanctions regime would be “balanced” and that it would target “no community, but attitudes”.
The French Minister of Foreign Affairs, Jean-Yves Le Drian, considered that this legal framework would be “a tool to put pressure on the Lebanese authorities to make progress in the composition of the government, which is an imperative necessity, and in the implementation of the reforms that the country is waiting for”. “Lebanon is a country that has been self-destructing for several months, but now there is a major emergency situation for a population that is in distress”, he warned.
For his part, Luxembourg’s Jean Asselborn, while refusing to “be the teacher of what Lebanon should do”, stressed that it was impossible for the country to continue as it was. “The EU is there to help and encourage those who want to put Lebanon on a different track”, he added.
In parallel to the Council, before the European Parliament’s Sub-Committee on Human Rights, the researcher and professor at the University of St Joseph in Beirut, Karim Emile Bitar, explained that “the majority of [Lebanese] citizens believe that it is time to change their attitude towards this political class”, which he described as a “bankocracy” and corrupt. “The time has come for a paradigm shift, for a much tougher stance”, he added, saying that the only way out of the crisis was to put more pressure on the political class.
“These sanctions, to be credible, must target both sides of the political spectrum”, he warned, implying politicians aligned with Syria and Iran and those close to Saudi Arabia and the US.
Mr Bitar recalled that 30% of Lebanese children go to bed without having been able to eat. “More than 55% of the Lebanese population lives below the poverty line, a figure that has doubled since 2019”, according to the World Bank and the UN, he added, recalling that extreme poverty had tripled. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)