Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq, who host between them around 3 million refugees from war-torn Syria, all face “real” threats to their territorial integrity, Enlargement Commissioner Stefan Fule told the European Parliament during today’s plenary.
“It is important to reiterate that the European Union's support to Syria now focuses mainly on Syrians that fled to neighbouring countries. To that, our support is also addressed to the host countries and communities,” Fule said.
He added though that the bloc “will continue in its humanitarian efforts and spare no effort to deliver life-saving and medical aid to besieged areas.”
With 9 million Syrians in need of aid, at the UN humanitarian conference hosted by Kuwait, the EU pledged an additional €550 million for the relief effort in the country raising its overall effort to €2.6 billion.
“The international community worked hard in Kuwait but only slightly more than a third of that sum was raised,” Fule told parliamentarians.
Fule said that this is the reason the Geneva peace talks are so important and admitted that progress in the first round has been slow but said that the parties are now talking to each other.
“The European Union considers that it is important to maintain a double track approach by discussing the difficult issue of a political transition and at the same time promoting confidence building measures that could alleviate some of the suffering being experienced by the Syrian people,” Fule said.
He added that “the tactics of "starve and surrender" practiced by the regime must end.”
Fule pointed out that groups that have not taken up arms could play a role in setting the conflict and added that the EU “has the ambition to look beyond the conflict and assist in educating and training of young Syrians who will be key to Syria's future.”
To this effect, he explained, the EU is planning to develop an ambitious training programme in cooperation with our Member States.