By Agnes Szucs
BRUSSELS (AA) – The second day of the EU special summit started on Tuesday in Brussels to discuss the global food shortage and energy crisis exacerbated by the war in Ukraine.
The leaders started the meeting with the assessment of the European Commission’s €210 billion ($225 billion) REPowerEU plan.
On May 18, the EU Commission presented the REPowerEU Plan in response to the current worldwide energy market disruptions that have been caused by Russia’s war on Ukraine, which started on Feb. 24.
The proposal is meant to reduce dependency on Russian energy and cut gas imports by two-thirds by the end of this year by accelerating the green transition into renewables and securing fossil fuel supply.
They also discussed the bloc’s response to the global food shortage exacerbated by the war in Ukraine.
Macky Sall, the head of the African Union, will also join the EU leaders via video for this part of the meeting.
The last topic on the agenda is defense reforms.
On the way to the summit, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell explained that the new plans for improving defense capacities aim to ensure that EU countries “increase military expenditure in a coordinated manner.”
He added that the bloc needs to coordinate military procurements and projects to avoid duplications.
At the same time, he admitted that it will not be easy to reform defense capabilities because it is “at the core of national sovereignty” and “army developments will require a lot of political skill.”
On the first day of the summit, the EU leaders reached a political agreement on the bloc’s sixth sanctions package against Russia.
Under the deal, the EU countries will cut 90% of Russian oil imports by the end of the year but will exempt crude oil transported by pipeline, as the main concession to Hungary.
The sanctions package also excludes Russia’s biggest bank, the Sberbank, from the SWIFT international payment system, and bans three new Russian state-owned broadcasters from the EU.