EU Puts Hezbollah on Notice
The European Union moves toward designating Hezbollah a terrorist organization as its arms embargo on Syria is allowed to lapse.
On May 21, the United Kingdom formally requested that the European Union add the military wing of Hezbollah to its list of terrorist organizations. Details of Hezbollah’s criminal activities surfaced earlier in the year, and London has since been pushing for a change in EU policy toward it.
In February, the Bulgarian government announced that two of the individuals responsible for the July 2012 bombing at the Burgas Airport that killed five Israeli tourists and a Bulgarian bus driver “belonged to the military formation of Hezbollah.” That announcement came around the same time that Cyprus prosecuted a Lebanese-Swedish citizen who had confessed to being a Hezbollah operative surveilling movements by Israeli tourists for potential targets.
These two cases triggered heated exchanges within the EU but failed to bring about a policy change, which only the Netherlands and the United Kingdom supported at the time. A potential game change surfaced last week, however, with diplomatic statements from Germany and France, which had previously expressed caution and urged restraint.
The first indication of a shift came from Berlin, when a diplomatic source told Reuters on May 22 that “in the light of discussions we have had with our partners following the terrorist attack in Burgas, Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle supports listing at least the military wing of Hezbollah as a terrorist organization in the EU.” Then, a day later, on the sidelines of a Friends of Syria meeting in Amman, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius confirmed that Paris too had changed its position and would support the British initiative.
