It is the first Ministerial meeting with Eastern partners since the beginning of the war in Ukraine. Such a statement made today High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy before the meeting with the Eastern Partnership foreign ministers.

“We are going to have a meeting with the Eastern Partnership [Foreign Ministers].

We have to rethink about how we work with Eastern partners, because three have become [EU accession] candidates, one is very far away from the European Union – Belarus. So, it is a very heterogenous set of countries. A regional approach to them has to be taken into consideration but, certainly, it is becoming more and more difficult.

It is the first Ministerial meeting with Eastern partners since the beginning of the war in Ukraine so, certainly, we will talk a lot about it.

And then, comes the [Foreign Affairs] Council. This Council is going to be very long and difficult because we have on the agenda Iran, we have on the agenda sanctions against Russia – the ninth package. We are still not there. We have not yet finished.

You know, there is a certain confusion: when me [the High Representative] and the President of the [European] Commission announce the sanctions, we are just announcing proposals. I said [this] many times: it is the Council who decides. And the 27 Ministers [of Foreign Affairs of the European Union] have different approaches.

So, since we made the announcement of the proposal – a proposal is not a decision – the proposal has been discussed and, I thought, this morning we were able to say “greenlighted”, it is still not the case. Maybe by the end of the day, but there are some questions to be still agreed [upon]. I hope we will end the day [with an agreement] – or maybe tomorrow – but I cannot say that it is going to be easy because there are different views among Member States.

[It is] important to make the distinction between proposal and decision: decisions belong to the Council”, - said Josep Borrell.