Christodoulidis: Enlargement is a powerful geopolitical tool and the EU must apply it

Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides said that enlargement is a powerful geopolitical instrument of the European Union, but that it has reduced the confidence of candidate countries in the EU through its mistakes, delays and unfulfilled promises.

"So, we have a powerful geopolitical tool that we are losing mainly due to our own mistakes. The situation is much better today. We decide, let's say, much faster," said Christodoulidis, whose country holds the presidency of the EU Council in the first half of this year, in an interview with the AP agency.

Christodoulidis said that the EU has accelerated decision-making to create mechanisms, but has not fulfilled its promise to admit new members in the past two years, which has diminished the trust that prospective candidate countries have in it.

He said that the EU must make some concrete decisions "quite quickly" regarding enlargement as a geopolitical instrument.

The President of Cyprus said he was pleased that other EU members now "understand the importance" of the bloc's rapprochement with the Middle East, through initiatives such as the Pact for the Mediterranean, which is implementing concrete projects in Middle Eastern countries in numerous areas, such as health, education or energy.

Closer relations with the countries of the Middle East are one of the priorities of the Cyprus presidency, which will host an informal EU-Middle East summit later this year. The leaders of Egypt, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan have been invited to the summit.

Christodoulidis said that the summit provides a good opportunity to "fulfill this priority of Cyprus with content." The summit, he said, will be an opportunity not only to exchange ideas, but also to realistically consider how to "elevate EU-Middle East cooperation to a strategic level."

"We can present to Brussels the interests of the countries of the wider Middle East region, but at the same time, and this is very, very important, the countries of the region trust Cyprus to represent them in the European Union," said Christodoulidis.

Christodoulidis also stressed that he is a strong advocate of the India-Middle East Economic Corridor (IMEC), a trade, energy and digital corridor that would connect Europe with "the largest democracy in the world", and assessed that this corridor could contribute to peace and stabilization in the Middle East.

Under the Cypriot presidency of the EU, the Friends of the India-Middle East Corridor (IMEC) group was formed, with the aim of promoting this initiative, which, according to the Cypriot president, still lacks concrete projects.

One such project should be a large undersea interconnector, which should connect the power grids of Cyprus and Greece, and in the future include Israel, but whose construction is delayed.

"We can cooperate with the Americans, the American administration, with President Trump on filling it with content, because that would be a win-win situation for both the EU and the US," Christodoulidis said.

Christodoulidis also said that EU leaders should start working on a plan for how to act if an EU member state is attacked and sends a call for help to other partners.

He recalled that the EU treaties contain Article 42(7), which obliges all 27 EU states to come to each other's aid in the event of a crisis. He said that EU leaders would discuss the article, as it is currently unknown "what would happen if a state activated that article".

Article 42.7 became particularly salient for Cyprus last month when an Iranian-made Shahed drone struck a British air base in the south of the island. The drone was launched from Lebanon, whose capital Beirut is just 209 kilometers from the southern coast of Cyprus.

Christodoulidis said that, given that most EU members are also part of NATO, the plan for implementing Article 42 should be clarified so that these countries can respond to a possible call for assistance from an EU partner without conflicting with their obligations as NATO members.

The question that also needs to be answered is whether the response to such a possible call for help would be collective, under the auspices of NATO, or would it only apply to partners in the neighborhood of the endangered EU member, said Christodoulidis.

Cyprus, which holds the rotating presidency of the EU Council, did not officially activate Article 42, paragraph 7 of the clause adopted in 2009 after the March 2 attacks, but Christodoulidis warned at the time that the EU must "urgently prepare for an emergency."