EU offers full support for SA’s G20 presidency in the face of US attacks

The European Union (EU) says South Africa can count on its full support of the country’s leadership and ambitious agenda for its G20 presidency. However, the EU’s foreign minister, Kaja Kallas, has also acknowledged that the EU will not be able to fill the vacuum if the US withdraws all aid from South Africa as it has threatened to do.

Kallas — whose imposing title is high representative for foreign affairs and security policy and vice-president of the European Commission — spoke to Daily Maverick after the EU-South Africa ministerial political dialogue with her counterpart Ronald Lamola and other ministers in Cape Town on Wednesday.

She told the meeting that it was in both the EU and SA’s interests to work together.

“Given the turbulent times that we have in the geopolitical context right now, we need to join forces as trusted partners. The EU is and will remain a reliable, predictable and credible partner.”

She was referring to the major global upheavals that the Trump administration has caused in its first month, including an executive order by President Donald Trump to cut off all aid to SA because of its Expropriation Act — which he interprets as a racial seizure of land — and Pretoria’s legal action against Israel because of its bombardment of Gaza.

Read more: All systems go despite Trump’s tempest as global allies rally to defend SA’s G20 presidency

Daily Maverick asked Kallas if she feared that SA’s presidency of the G20 would fail if the US sabotaged it. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced recently that he would not attend the G20 summit and was not attending the G20 foreign ministers’ meeting on Thursday because SA was “doing bad things”.

She said she didn’t know if the US could wreck SA’s presidency, but: “The key is for the like-minded partners, everybody, to stick together. So I mean, because if you take the G20 presidency goals, they’re like dignity, equality, sustainability, so these are the goals, sovereignty as well, which we are fully aligned to.”

However, she also made clear that the EU could not fill the void in aid if the US pulled out, particularly its substantial financing of the fight against HIV/Aids.

Because the US was cutting foreign aid globally, Kallas said, “All the multilateral organisations that the US is withdrawing from are at our doors.

“Also countries, regarding the development aid, are at our door. We are still the biggest supplier of development aid in the world. Can we fill the gap that is left by the US?

“No, we can’t. We have to be strategic about this, and really act as a geopolitical power as well, which means that we also have worries, we also have asks…”

Ukraine, EU sidelined

Kallas was adamant that no peace deal for Ukraine would succeed without the participation of Ukraine — and of Europe. She was reacting to Trump’s launch of peace negotiations with Russia this week, cutting out both Ukraine itself and the EU.  

Kallas was confident Europe would eventually get a seat at the negotiating table, “because any deal without us, any agreement without us will just fail”.

Asked if the fallout with the Trump administration this past week was a wake-up call for Europe that it had to do more to support Ukraine, Kallas said it had reinforced what the EU had realised before: “We have to do more on our defence, we have to stick together and we really need to not only talk about this but also to do.”

She said Russia was spending more than 9% of its GDP and more than 40% of its budget on its military, and so if it walked away with all its demands of Ukraine, “then they will want to use the military machine again and then actually the whole security of Europe is in danger and that’s why we really need to step up our action here”.

Kallas said the EU was discussing many options to fund increased defence spending, including issuing special bonds and exempting defence spending from the Maastricht fiscal and debt limits for EU member states.

Whatever the EU did would be “very painful decisions from the member states because … it’s an illusion if we think that we can just do this without reallocation of resources…”

Kallas said Europe could not fill the void in military spending for Ukraine if the US pulled out. She said Ukraine was paying for 55% of its military spending, the EU 25% and the US 20%.

“Of course, 20% is a very big share and we can’t fill the void, but the US hasn’t said that they will pull out.”

International law

Daily Maverick also asked her for the current EU view on South Africa’s position, which has been controversial in Europe because SA has refused to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, including in several UN General Assembly resolutions.

Kallas said this was discussed at the EU-SA meeting earlier in the day “and South Africa is supporting the United Nations Charter, which says it’s forbidden to attack the sovereignty, territorial integrity of another country, which Russia does.

“So South Africa says that they are fully behind the principles of the international law and the UN Charter, and that also applies to Russia.”

However, Kallas seemed to be referring to SA’s equivocal position on the war when she said that from a distance, it was easier to see this as a conflict that both sides should do something to end.

“Whereas this war … is as black and white as one can be. One country brutally attacks another country, one country brutally kills civilians, attacks civilian infrastructure, which is all against the humanitarian law.

“It’s not that they had a border dispute or anything. It’s internationally recognised borders, also by Russia.”

So the question now was, does international law still stand or does it become “whoever has the might has the right”?

Kallas said her own experiences of Russia, growing up in Estonia when it was part of the Soviet Union, helped shape her views of Russia’s war against Ukraine. Kallas was prime minister of Estonia from 2021 to 2024. Members of her family fought against Russian occupation.

She said South Africa had been free for 30 years, and Estonia for 34 years — and so both still remembered the struggle for freedom.

“There’s a saying that you only understand the value of freedom when it’s taken from you. And I come from the lucky generation that didn’t have freedom and I have it now.

“So I don’t take it for granted. And I also don’t want anybody to suffer under the Russian occupation like we did.

“And so that’s why we see very clearly the Russian playbook, as we have been also occupied by them and we know their lies, we know how they operate.

“And we also know that it is dangerous for the whole world if they get away with this.”

Carbon tariffs

Kallas indicated that the EU was consulting more widely about its Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) an environmental measure which would impose a surcharge on the carbon content of exports to the EU. The SA government has sharply criticised CBAM as a form of trade protectionism.

“One thing that everybody has realised in the European Union is that very often our internal policies have external effects, and CBAM is one of those examples,” said Kallas.

Read more: EU carbon price on imports ‘violates’ WTO rules, says Patel as SA heads for clash with bloc

“Deforestation is another of those examples,” she said, referring to another climate measure which would penalise farmers who cut down natural forests to grow crops.

“So I think the lesson that we learned from this is that we really need to engage with our partners outside the European Union if we come up with the internal policies that have an effect on our relationship.

“So, for example, deforestation is now postponed for a year to have these discussions and to take this into account — I think this is the lesson we learned.”

Kallas also stressed that a partnership between the EU and SA on developing critical minerals was a priority. It would be mutually beneficial as the EU needed the critical minerals (for green energy and high-tech applications) and was able to provide investment and technology to add value to the minerals in SA to maximise prosperity and job creation here.  DM