EU split on Palestine

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Today’s vote at UNESCO’s General Conference on full membership for Palestine gives an idea of how a United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) vote could go if the membership bid gets that far. More worrying for me is the complete split among European Union member states showing the failure of the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP).

The application for membership was accepted by 107 Yes votes to 14 No votes with 52 Abstentions. The EU was split as follows;

Countries voting YES:

• Austria
• Belgium
• Cyprus
• Finland
• France
• Greece
• Ireland
• Luxembourg
• Malta
• Slovenia
• Spain

Countries voting NO:

• Czech Republic
• Germany
• Lithuania
• Netherlands
• Sweden

Countries who Abstained:

• Bulgaria
• Denmark
• Estonia
• Hungary
• Italy
• Latvia
• Poland
• Portugal
• Romania
• Slovakia
• United Kingdom

So that meant the EU split 11 Yes, 5 No and 11 Abstentions. Some Common policy there?

The question of Palestinian membership of the United Nations is going to be a long protracted one as long as the United States is threatening the use of the Veto on the UN Security Council. This is holding up a vote in the UNGA on Palestine’s membership. But at least now the Palestinians have an idea of the amount of support they have within the UN System.

Of course the fallout of this vote will not show in the EU’s CFSP and will be ignored. But the big fallout will either be the US withholding funding from UNESCO or withdrawing from the organisation completely.

For now though the idea of a Common Foreign Policy is a long way off, and today’s vote proves that.

Addendum

The applicant Countires to the EU voted as follows:

• Croatia: ABSTAINED
• FYR Macedonia: ABSTAINED
• Turkey: YES
• Iceland: YES

The potential Candidate Countries voted as follows:

• Albania: ABSTAINED
• Bosnia and Herzegovina: ABSTAINED
• Kosovo: Not a member
• Montenegro: ABSTAINED
• Serbia: YES

To see a full list of how countries voted check out the post on

The Human Province

Related articles

• Unesco grants Palestine full membership (guardian.co.uk)

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