Taoiseach ‘satisfied’ with EU’s call for pauses rather than ceasefire in Gaza

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has said he is “satisfied” with the European Union’s call for “pauses” in the conflict in Gaza.

After hours of negotiations on Thursday night, EU leaders agreed a statement which sought humanitarian pauses in the war in Gaza but stopped short of calling for an outright ceasefire.

“I’m satisfied with the language. It was always going to be difficult to come to a compromise that 27 countries with different perspectives could sign up to,” Mr Varadkar told journalists in Brussels on Friday as he arrived for the second day of the leaders’ summit.

The Taoiseach also said that the EU position was “evolving” as time went by.

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He added: “If you went back to two or three weeks ago, it appeared that the EU was supporting Israel without any equivocation or qualification. That changed a week or so ago to continuing to support Israel’s right to defend itself but emphasising the supremacy of international law, particularly humanitarian law, to yesterday, 27 countries calling for a pause to allow aid to get in and to allow citizens and hostages to get out – so I think you’re seeing an evolving position there.”

Mr Varadkar added that one thing the EU was united on “from day one” was the “total condemnation of the attacks carried out by Hamas”.

“The fight against terrorism is a common European fight and there can be no equivocation on that,” he said.

In foreign policy, Mr Varadkar said, any position taken by the EU has to have unanimity among its members and therefore is going to be a compromise.

“The option we have into the future is to have a common foreign policy but that means being willing to be outvoted on occasion, and I think people would be uncomfortable with that too,” he said.

Asked if the EU’s position could evolve into calling outright for a ceasefire, Mr Varadkar said this was “possible, depending on how things develop on the ground”.

But he added: “In some ways I hope that doesn’t happen because if the European Union got to the position where it was calling for a ceasefire, it probably would be after a lot more people have died and suffered in the region. So in some ways I hope it doesn’t come to that. But it is possible that could be the position in a few weeks or a few months time.”

Mr Varadkar went on to say: “The history of this conflict didn’t begin with the attacks on October 7th and won’t end with a land war in Gaza...This won’t end with a military solution and one of the things we all agreed yesterday, and all 27 countries agreed to this, is that there should be a two-state solution and we need to have a peace conference, and the EU needs to be part of that.”

EU leaders will discuss the Eurozone, the wider EU economy and Ukraine on Friday after their meeting was addressed by Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Thursday

“It’s really important that we don’t lose focus on Ukraine,” Mr Varadkar said. “We need to double down on our support for Ukraine – political, military, financial and other supports.”

Earlier, Minister for Public Expenditure Paschal Donohoe, who is attending the summit for the economic discussions in his capacity as president of the Eurogroup of finance ministers, said Ireland would continue to be a large contributor to the EU budget.

On possible changes to the benefits available to Ukrainian refugees in Ireland, Mr Donohoe said no decision had been made, but he expected one would be “soon”.

There were numerous reports of a bust-up at Cabinet between Minister for Integration Roderic O’Gorman and Tánaiste Micheal Martin on the issue at Tuesday’s meeting.

“This is an issue that has already been discussed at many different levels within Government .It’s been discussed a number of times in the Ukraine Cabinet sub-committee...and the discussion that took place in Cabinet earlier this week is just part of that deliberative process, so I would expect that it would conclude soon,” he said.

Mr Donohoe would not say if some tightening of the availability of benefits was inevitable.