Spanish Foreign Minister José Luis Albares says the bloc is finally standing up in defense of the rules-based order and against “a unilateral war that is not our own.”
ALCALÁ DE HENARES, Spain — Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s condemnation of the U.S. and Israel’s attack on Iran initially made him an outlier in Europe.
Now everyone wants in.
“Europe is finally standing up — as Spain did from the start,” Spanish Foreign Minister José Luis Albares said in an interview with POLITICO.
In the immediate aftermath of the bombing that started the latest war in the Middle East, Madrid’s firm opposition to the conflict and criticism of the “illegal” action contrasted with the more ambiguous positions taken by other European capitals keen to avoid clashing with U.S. President Donald Trump.
But during the past two weeks EU leaders have changed their tune, with even Italy’s right-wing prime minister and noted Trump ally, Giorgia Meloni, saying the attack fell “outside the scope of international law.”
According to draft conclusions obtained by POLITICO, at Thursday’s European Council summit the bloc will rebuke Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by pointedly calling for “full respect of international law by all parties, including the principles of the United Nations Charter and international humanitarian law.”
In a swipe at European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who said last week that Europe could “no longer be a custodian for the old-world order” and needed a “more realistic and interest-driven foreign policy,” Albares said EU leaders had discovered that “true realism means speaking out for peace, protecting the well-being of our citizens, and advocating in favor of de-escalation.”
“We are not living through a clash between an old and new world order,” he added. “What is at stake is the world order which has given Europe the greatest decades of peace and prosperity.”
The foreign minister drew a link between the unsanctioned attack on Iran and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, as well as Washington’s intervention in Venezuela and Trump’s desire to annex Greenland. “Foreign policy objectives can never be imposed with war,” he said, and disregarding the global rules-based order will “only lead to chaos.”
He said the EU’s public shift in position showed Madrid was never “alone” in condemning the war, but had simply been “first, leading so that others could follow behind.”
The bloc, he added, has an obligation to speak out in defense of international law and against “a unilateral war that is not our own, about which we were neither consulted nor informed.” He noted that the conflict is already impacting European citizens, who are now dealing with soaring power prices and could face a new migration crisis in Europe.
“There are already almost 1 million internally displaced persons in Lebanon,” he said. “We all remember how the exodus of Syrian citizens affected us.”
Albares argued that, like Spain, the rest of the EU must be consistent in condemning war, “be it in Ukraine or in the Middle East.”
“We have always been on the side of the civilians who need to be protected,” he said. “We say the same thing when the victim is a white child with blue eyes as when the child has dark skin and dark eyes.”