The head of EU diplomacy, Josep Borrell, acknowledged that the idea of the European Commission to create some kind of specialized international tribunal for Ukraine did not find unanimous support from the EU foreign ministers at a recent meeting in Brussels.
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The European Commission at the end of November came up with the initiative to create a special international tribunal for Ukraine under the auspices of the UN. EC chief Ursula von der Leyen said the commission is “ready to work with international partners” to advance the initiative. Later, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, Karim Khan, noted that the EU plans to create a special tribunal “undermine a similar investigation that the ICC is conducting.” The document “on the fight against impunity for crimes committed” in Ukraine, agreed on December 9 by the EU Council, does not even mention the EC proposal for a tribunal.
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“There is a controversy about whether we need something else besides the ICC to fight impunity in Ukraine. Together with the European Commission, I submitted a proposal to the ministers and we discussed it, although without a concrete result … It is possible to create something else, this is an interesting discussion which had no concrete answer,” Borrell said, speaking at a human rights forum in Brussels on Wednesday.
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At the same time, he stressed that “absolutely we must do more to fight impunity,” but did not announce his future plans in this direction.
