European Union foreign ministers met in Copenhagen on Saturday but remained sharply divided over how to take measures against Israel over its war on Gaza, with some calling for the EU to apply strong economic pressure on Israel while others made clear they were unwilling to go that far.
"We are divided about this issue," Kaja Kallas, the EU's foreign policy chief, said as she arrived for a meeting with the ministers in the Danish capital Copenhagen.
"If you don't have a unified voice... on this topic, we don't have a voice on the global scene. So that's definitely very problematic," she said.
Kallas said she was "not very optimistic" that ministers could agree even on a proposal she described as lenient, as it is less severe than other options, to curb Israeli access to an EU research-funding programme.
Israel’s brutal offensive, launched in response to the October 7, 2023, attack on Israel by Palestinian group Hamas, has brought to the surface deeply rooted differences among the EU's 27 countries on the Middle East.
