French website “Intelligence Online” has published a report confirming that the Syrian regime, still isolated on the European scene, has asked the European Union to ease sanctions imposed on it.
The report also said that the decision of the European Court of Justice to annul the list of Syrian businessman Nizar Assad linked to the Syrian regime on March 8 has encouraged the regime in its efforts to persuade other European bodies. to lift the sanctions imposed on him.
The site revealed unofficial visits to Damascus by some European personalities, where it confirmed an unofficial visit to Damascus in October by lawyer Vincent Bisivo, who left his post in late 2022 to work with the EU Council on EU sanctions. meet prominent local personalities there.
He was also photographed on Twitter, standing next to Patriarch Mor Ignatius Aphrem II, who expressed his stance against the European Union’s sanctions against the Syrian regime while he was in Europe.
The report confirmed that in early 2021 the patriarch sent letters and messages to French President Emmanuel Macron and American Joe Biden condemning these sanctions.
The report also stated that Bisefu is no stranger to Syrian issues. He worked on the Rami Makhlouf case in 2019 but has since been reassigned to a new post that has nothing to do with sanctions.
Bisevu, in his final reports to the Council before he set off, gradually began to write in favor of a re-evaluation of the sanctions policy towards the Syrian regime in cooperation with the banking sector.
It seems that while in Damascus, Bisevu met with the Austrian Embassy Charge d’affaires in Syria, Peter Kroess, without informing his superiors in the Council, and the Austrian official said the official position of Vienna, regarding the European Union’s sanctions against the regime.
Until 2020, he was the Austrian delegate of the Council of the European Union’s Arab Maghreb/Mashareq working group, which, together with the European External Action Service, oversees decisions on sanctions.
The site’s report showed that Bisevu is not the only European official to try to urge the European Union to reconsider its sanctions policy. European Parliament Member Thierry Mariani is the head of the European Parliament’s Group of Christians from the Middle East and a frequent visitor. It has repeatedly assigned a mission to Damascus on this issue to the European Union.
While discussions on sanctions continue in Damascus and Brussels, the Syrian regime is trying to accelerate its regional integration, starting with the preparations to normalize its relations with Saudi Arabia.
But these go hand in hand with the regime’s hopes of improving its relations with the West: Members of the “Federation of Syrian Chambers of Commerce” demonstrated the regime’s determination when they visited Paris on March 15 for the first time in 12 years. and the insistence that sanctions must be lifted before any action is taken to restore economic relations between them.
