The recently appointed director general of US President Donald Trump's Board of Peace, Nickolay Mladenov, is scheduled to meet the EU's 27 foreign ministers for the first time on Monday.
The meeting, over an informal lunch, will be an opportunity to discuss the European bloc's contribution to the Gaza peace plan announced by Mr Trump and endorsed by the UN Security Council in November, a senior EU official said.
“Ministers will have … an opportunity to discuss with Mladenov in more concrete, practical terms, how that co-operation can take place,” the official said. “After the Board of Peace meeting that focused on Gaza, I suppose there are still a lot of outstanding questions,” they added.
The European Commission has been criticised by France for sending the Commissioner for the Mediterranean, Dubravka Suica, as an observer to the first formal gathering of the Board of Peace on Thursday.
Critics say there is no official observer status and that the Commission overstepped its role by participating without a clear mandate from all EU states.
In a statement posted on X on Thursday accompanied by a picture with Mr Mladenov, Ms Suica said: “The EU Commission stands ready to work with your team in implementing phase two of the Gaza Peace Plan.
“Our engagement in supporting the Palestinian people is complementary to the work under the Board of Peace for Gaza and the implementation of point 19 of the plan, in line with UN Resolution 2803.”
During the meeting, Mr Mladenov said about 2,000 Palestinians had signed up to join a new Palestinian police force operating in Gaza. The EU has a two-decade-old training mission for Palestinian police named Eupol Copps in the West Bank and separately operates another mission that supervises Palestinian guards at the Rafah border crossing.
“A possible mandate extension of Eupol Copps to include a training component for the Palestinian police in Gaza is being explored,” a second senior EU official said. It would require agreements by EU member states in close co-ordination with Israeli and Palestinian partners.
Following recent Israeli moves to strengthen control of the West Bank, the EU's foreign affairs chief Kaja Kallas is expected to test states' views on a sanctions proposal against Israel. It was shelved four months ago after the US-brokered Gaza ceasefire was struck.
The Commission had suggested sanctioning extremist Israeli ministers and suspending preferential tariffs, at an estimated annual cost for Israel of €227 million ($265 million). The EU's position is that the West Bank has been illegally occupied by Israel since 1967.
In January, Mr Mladenov, a UAE-based Bulgarian diplomat, became the on-the-ground administrator of the Board of Peace, which is seeking to implement the second phase of the ceasefire in Gaza.
Announced in mid-January by the US administration, phase two has stalled in the face of multiple obstacles. Israel has unilaterally moved the “yellow line” marking the boundary of its military control deeper into Gaza, even though Israeli withdrawals are part of the ceasefire deal. Hamas has so far rejected demands to lay down its weapons.
The Gaza health ministry says that at least 600 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire since the agreement began. Israel says four soldiers have been killed by militants in Gaza over the same period.
