1.

Recommends that the Council and the Vice-President of the Commission / High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy: (a) reiterate strong support for Ukraine’s territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence within its internationally recognised borders; provide all necessary material, military, financial and humanitarian aid to Ukraine, and prepare to contribute as much as possible to rebuilding the country post-war, as democracy and freedom are dependent on prosperity and economic stability; establish a legal instrument allowing frozen Russian assets and funds to be confiscated and used for reparations and the reconstruction of Ukraine; (b) build upon the resolve and unity demonstrated at the beginning of the war against Ukraine and urgently deliver on their joint level of ambition; make genuine progress in foreign policy and defence cooperation at Union level, as expressed in the Versailles Declaration and the Council’s conclusions of 24 and 25 March 2022; (c) agree that the VP/HR should be present ex officio in negotiating formats initiated or led by EU Member States; (d) introduce qualified majority voting for certain foreign policy areas, as already provided for in the Treaties, for example the adoption of EU personal sanctions regimes, and strive to extend qualified majority voting to foreign policy in the Council, in order to increase the effectiveness of EU foreign policy; (e) ensure that Member States adhere to the principles of the Treaties, especially Article 24 TEU, which notes that the ‘Member States shall support the Union’s external and security policy actively and unreservedly in a spirit of loyalty and mutual solidarity’; (f) make swift progress in establishing a defence union with more ambitious short-, medium- and long-term objectives by implementing the concrete actions laid down in the Strategic Compass, which would serve as a starting point for implementing common EU defence, in line with the provision laid down in Article 42(2) TEU; (g) intensify cooperation with like-minded partners around the globe, especially with transatlantic NATO allies, in order to maintain the strongest possible unity in defence of the rules-based international order, thus promoting and defending peace, democratic principles and respect for human rights, and ensuring that economic dependencies do not prevail over the defence of human rights and the values the Union stands for; emphasise, in particular, such cooperation with countries in the Global South and utilise development cooperation and the global gateway strategy to that end; emphasise the need for international cooperation on food security concerns; (h) establish a regular EU defence minister council; (i) make the Union’s strategic autonomy an overarching aim in all areas and a fundamental and holistic approach to its foreign, security and defence policy and external action, to give it the ability to act alone when needed and with partners when possible and therefore enable it to play an important role on the international stage; create tools to counteract economic coercion and to achieve, as soon as possible, food sovereignty and full security of energy supplies to reduce energy dependencies; further ensure that supply chains are diversified to counter strategic dependencies on raw materials; ensure, in this context, that there is also reciprocity in investment and trade policy; (j) work with allies and partners to address the secondary consequences of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, including food security in non-EU countries, in particular in the Union’s neighbourhood; (k) fight and counter propaganda and disinformation campaigns in the Union and its neighbourhood and boost cooperation with partners in EU candidate and potential candidate countries and around the world, including by urgently setting up the necessary legal and technical abilities to do so, in order to counter malign foreign interference, such as that by Russia prior to and during its war of aggression against Ukraine; strengthen the capacities of the European External Action Service’s East StratCom Task Force; have a proactive, multilingual and strategic communication policy;