The EU is seeking to deepen ties with Syria and move away from its traditional humanitarian approach amid lingering Russian influence in the region and a Jordanian fighter-jet attack last month.
A flurry of meetings, starting in Brussels among EU foreign ministers on Monday (16 November), are set to thrash out ideas on how to re-engage with the country ravished by a civil war that eventually saw the collapse of the totalitarian Bashar al-Assad regime in late 2024.
Dubravka Šuica, the EU commissioner for the Mediterranean, will then be in Damascus on on Tuesday. Her superior, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, will be in Jordan on Thursday.
The visits and surrounding events are primed towards helping Syria stabilise, rebuild, and reconnect with the wider world, and possibly create a stable supply of energy to Europe.
Although it still continues to offer humanitarian assistance, the EU wants to help Syrians rebuild after promising €455m for socio-economic recovery.
“We will help them to reform things like the banking sector, the business environment,” said one EU official, who requested not to be named.
“They still need, for example, corresponding banks that will allow transfer of funding from Europe or the US into Syria. That still doesn’t exist,” said the official.
Russia, which had close ties to the ousted Bashar al-Assad regime, remains a problem.