Long before Jared Kushner, Donald Trump's son-in-law and adviser, ironically, Thursday, February 6, on the lack of consensus among the member states of the European Union (EU) as to their positioning with regard to the "plan of peace ”he designed, European diplomats at the UN were already paying the price for the dissidence of a country, Hungary, over the Israeli-Palestinian issue. The "flaw" mentioned by Mr. Kushner is far from new: it has been more than a year since Budapest, which defends the Trump plan, refuses to validate certain EU statements in New York, preventing Brussels from express on behalf of all of its member states on the world diplomatic stage.
On January 21, in a sequence that has become common at the UN Security Council, a discussion takes place on "The situation in the Middle East, including the Palestinian situation". The fifteen members of the Security Council, who speak there on behalf of their own country, discuss the developments of the Israeli settlements, the latest violations of the resolutions noted and repeat their positions.
Difficult consensus
Olof Skoog, the EU ambassador to the UN since 1st January is traditionally invited to speak on behalf of the Twenty-Seven, as a regional organization. But in its place, the Portuguese ambassador sits down and reads his press release: a few days earlier, the Hungarian mission in New York had reiterated that Budapest did not approve the text – de facto preventing the joint declaration .
"This is the fourth successive meeting to which the ambassador was unable to report the EU position in person, this greatly weakens our visibility"laments a diplomat. "It’s always annoying when Europe cannot express itself unanimously, entrusts another. Because the EU still has weight at the United Nations, with its 500 million inhabitants, a third of the UN budget, 27 votes in the votes in working committees (where 193 countries sit). "
"The big gap between these two notions is the fragility of the EU. »An observer
However, except for a few questions, the unity of the Twenty-Seven is the norm. In the working commissions under the aegis of the UN General Assembly, the diplomats of the UN mission in the EU are particularly active, and are doing very important coordination work to achieve this. "Unity is insured in 95% of cases", notes a diplomat. The Israeli-Palestinian issue, the right to abortion, migration are however subjects on which consensus is difficult to find.
