Good morning Brussels. Angela Skujins here welcoming you into the first day of the working week, where temperatures are set to soar and UV rays expected to blast. But as they say, sunlight is the best disinfectant.
On today’s menu: a Commissioner in Israel, Starmer staves off leadership threats and another summit.
First up. As Iran and the United States kickstarted a negotiating window to permanently end the war, with major progress also made aiming to end the Israeli offensive in Lebanon, a senior member of Brussels’ top brass will be in Jerusalem on Monday — but much of her itinerary is shrouded in mystery.
European Commissioner for the Mediterranean, Dubravka Šuica, is the senior official in question. According to a media invite circulated by Israel’s Ministry for Foreign Affairs and seen by Euronews, she will deliver a press statement alongside Israel’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Gideon Sa’ar, today at 3:15 p.m. local time. This is one hour ahead of Brussels.
Details of the media affair are very much under wraps. The meeting is not on Šuica’s calendar, and her cabinet did not respond to my request for comment. We also reached out to Israel’s foreign affairs ministry but by the time this newsletter was sent out, we did not receive a response On top of this, various diplomatic sources in Brussels I spoke to this morning were also out of the loop regarding the occasion and its contents.
