00:00We're going to cross then to Brussels, talk to our correspondent who joins us there, Dave Keating.
00:04Dave, let's start with the Middle East. I mean, very much, of course, minds at that summit on the situation
00:10there.
00:14Yeah, this is yet another EU summit whose original agenda has been hijacked by the need to respond to actions
00:20of Donald Trump.
00:21Just for clarity here, there are supposed to be four of these European Council summits per year.
00:26We are already on our third of 2026 because two extraordinary councils were called.
00:32And the first one in January was in response to Trump's threats to invade Greenland.
00:37Now, of course, Iran, the war on Iran, is the big subject that they need to respond to today.
00:42And they need to respond to two things.
00:44One, they need to have some kind of strategy about how to deal with the rising energy prices as a
00:49result of the war in the short term.
00:51European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has sent out a letter outlining possible short-term measures.
00:59They want to discourage any major action by individual EU member states that could disrupt the entire common market.
01:05So the letter contains a couple of different ideas.
01:09Price caps are in there controversially.
01:11They'll certainly discuss that today.
01:12But there's also different national measures that they can take that she says will not disrupt the functioning of the
01:18entire single market.
01:20They may also talk about long-term measures.
01:22Georgia Maloney, Italy's prime minister, has come into this summit today wanting to suspend EU climate law.
01:29Specifically, she wants to suspend the EU emissions trading system.
01:33That's the bedrock of EU climate law, saying that the obligations on companies are just too much right now,
01:38especially with energy prices going up as a result of the war.
01:41She's got the support of nine other countries, other EU countries on that, all from Eastern Europe.
01:46That could be an explosive discussion today.
01:48And then, of course, they also have to talk about whether Europe is going to get involved in this.
01:54Now, we've been told by national government representatives that the foreign ministers at a summit here in Brussels on Monday
02:00already discussed Donald Trump's request to send ships to the Strait of Hormuz,
02:04and they dismissed that out of hand, universally.
02:06They said they do not expect that subject to be brought up again.
02:10Yet, coming into the summit just an hour ago, the Cypriot president, don't forget, Cyprus is being targeted by Iranian
02:17drones and missiles.
02:18He came in saying that they are going to discuss the possibility of a coordinated European action to protect the
02:25Strait of Hormuz.
02:25He either didn't get the memo or he's planning to push for that today.
02:29So, I think that's one to watch, because even though they all came into this saying,
02:33no, no, no, the question of protecting the Strait of Hormuz is settled,
02:36you never know if this could take on a life of its own today in these leaders' discussions.
02:41Yeah, all to follow. I'm sure Dave will be following it for us here on France 24.
02:44Dave, we also talked about Ukraine at the top there, and you talked about that hijacking.
02:48I mean, originally, a lot of the summit there was due to be on Ukraine.
02:51It still will be, though, of course, won't it?
02:55Yeah, this is another issue that they're responding to Donald Trump,
02:58because this is still trying to settle the issue of how the EU can replace the lost U.S. funding
03:04for Ukraine that Donald Trump pulled.
03:06They thought they had a solution to that back in December,
03:09when Viktor Orban agreed to this 90 billion euro loan, as long as Hungary didn't have to pay into it.
03:15You may remember there was this other plan to use frozen Russian assets,
03:18but the Belgian prime minister vetoed that over legal concerns.
03:22So they had this deal in place with Orban, and then a couple weeks ago, he reneged on it.
03:26He said that, you know, he's going back to his veto,
03:28and that's because he thinks that Ukraine is purposefully blocking oil shipments from Russia to Hungary via the Druzba pipeline.
03:37Now, Ukraine says that that pipeline was targeted and hit by Russia and that they can't fix it fast enough.
03:43Viktor Orban has accused Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky of purposefully sabotaging the pipeline.
03:49So the EU has agreed to Orban's request for a fact-finding mission in Ukraine.
03:53The leftover issue that they need to discuss today is that Orban wants Hungary to lead that investigation.
03:59The other EU countries want the European Commission to lead that investigation.
04:03But even if they give in to Orban's demand for Hungary to have an outsized role in that investigation,
04:07it's still not clear whether he'll end this veto today,
04:10because we have this Hungarian election coming up on April 12th.
04:14And this whole issue is seen very, very much as election politicking.
04:18And there's a feeling that Orban probably won't relent on this until after April 12th.
04:23But every day is pivotal for Ukraine because they are rapidly running out of funding.
04:28So they're going to do their best today to convince Viktor Orban to drop his veto.
04:32But it's anything but certain that he's going to.
04:35Daniel, thanks so much.
04:36Dave Keating following events there in Brussels for us.
04:39And we'll be back, of course, with Dave during the day to update you in the latest.
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