Spain’s PM just accused Europe of quietly betraying Ukraine
Pedro Sánchez walked into an EU summit in Cyprus this week and said something most European leaders have been carefully avoiding for two years.
He told them that Europe’s credibility on Ukraine is being destroyed by its silence on Israel.
Sánchez called it a “double yardstick.” The EU has slammed Russia with 20 rounds of sanctions over Ukraine. It has frozen Russian assets, banned imports, kicked banks off SWIFT, and rallied the Western world behind Kyiv.
On Israel, after more than two years of war in Gaza and now strikes on Lebanon, the EU has done almost nothing.
Not a single sanctions package has been approved by member states. Not one.
Brussels already knows
Here is the part that makes the whole thing harder to defend. Brussels itself already ran the numbers.
An internal review published last year found that Israel is in breach of Article 2 of the EU-Israel Association Agreement. That is the clause requiring respect for human rights. It is legally binding.
The review was sitting on the table when Sánchez spoke. Everyone in the room had read it.
Spain has been pushing for months to suspend the agreement. Ireland and Slovenia are with them. Their three foreign ministers wrote a joint letter to EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas demanding action.
But suspending the deal needs a qualified majority of EU members. And that is where it dies.
Germany will not move. Italy will not move. Without those two, the math does not work, and the agreement stays exactly as it is.
So Sánchez did the only thing left. He made it about Ukraine.
Why link the two wars?
His logic is simple, and it stings. How does Europe lecture Vladimir Putin about international law while ignoring identical breaches by an ally?
How do you ask the world to side with Ukraine on principle, then drop those principles the moment they apply somewhere else?
“Something is delegitimising us” Sánchez said. He meant in the eyes of the rest of the world, but also in the eyes of Europeans themselves.
You can already see it in polling across Europe. Trust in EU institutions on foreign policy is sliding. The Global South has stopped listening when Brussels talks about a rules-based order.
Macron took a different road
Emmanuel Macron was in Cyprus too, but he did not follow Sánchez into the harder fight.
The French president focused on Lebanon. He called on the EU to protect Lebanese “peace, stability and sovereignty,” which is real but also safer political ground.
It tells you something. Even Macron, who has been more outspoken than most European leaders on Gaza, would not directly link the EU’s Israel policy to its credibility on Ukraine.
Sánchez is now the only major Western European leader willing to say the quiet part out loud.
The Trump factor
Hovering over all of this is Donald Trump, who announced Thursday that the Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire he brokered will be extended by three weeks.
That extension is fragile. If it collapses, Europe will face the question Sánchez just asked all over again, and probably with even less time to dodge it.
The proposal to suspend the Association Agreement is not dead, but it is on life support. Spain will keep pushing. Germany and Italy will keep blocking.
The interesting question is what Sánchez does with this argument now that he has put it on the record. Does he keep hammering it at every EU summit until something cracks?
Or does the political cost get too high, and the whole thing fade like every other attempt before it?
The EU built its identity around defending Ukraine. Sánchez just suggested that identity is starting to wobble, and from a direction nobody saw coming.