You have probably read that last week European states wanted to help Syrians rebuild their country after the fall of the Assad regime, generously throwing a few billion euros to address skyrocketing humanitarian needs.
What you may not have heard, however, is that the EU 27 have actually decided to let Syria down, at the worst possible time.
When the EU-27 announced they suspended their sanctions on energy, transport or financial services, that meant the sanctions remained in place.
There is a fundamental difference between "suspending" and "lifting" sanctions — and European businesses will not invest in bridges, hospitals and schools if sanctions are not lifted.
The EU’s decision to not lift these Assad-era sanctions undermines its stated goal of helping Syrians rebuild their country, it will create even more instability and a vacuum in which Russia and Iran will re-anchor themselves.
First, we should remember sanctions are supposed to be a tool to change the behaviour of people in power.
For example, in 2011 Syrian human rights defenders documented that Assad was using European tech companies to track down thousands of citizens, so the EU sanctioned telecom companies Syriatel and MTN and Sweden's tech giant had to stop supplying them. Assad's repression continued, but with an ever increasing economic and political cost, as he fully relied on Iranian and Russian technology.
Today, the very same Syrians who successfully called for Assad's telecoms to be sanctioned are urging the EU to lift sanctions so they can reconnect with the rest of the world after Assad's fall.
Just as the EU was right to listen to human rights defenders, it should now listen to them and lift all sectoral sanctions — the only sanctions that should remain are those targeting individuals, not the entire country.
Not lifting sectoral sanctions, without presenting any clear roadmap for Syrians to understand the purpose of this perpetuation, is a disturbing lack of strategy.
In sharp contrast with the EU's detailed justification for the sanctions it enforced on Assad for many years, the EU issued vague and contradictory statements of "longstanding EU support" noting "positive developments" but expecting an inclusive process for all Syrians including women, "beyond faith and ethnicity".
The EU does not even bother to articulate what their new conditions were to lift them: no benchmarks, no target.
The consequences, however, are all too clear for both Syrians and Europeans. For example, you may have heard some governments rejoice at the prospect of seeing millions of Syrian refugees return to their homeland.
Fact is, Syrian parents say that will not happen without the infrastructure of daily life: schools, internet, health care. Without it, they see no future for their children.
Like elsewhere, most companies do not invest if their business could become illegal in a few months. Building a school, for instance, may require a bank loan. Yet local banks have no cash as they cannot access the international financial system, as sanctions are not fully lifted and therefore regulatory overcompliance remains. Banks remember what happened when sanctions on Iran were suspended then unexpectedly reinstated a couple of years later: most investments had to stop, resulting in a net loss for business.
An even deeper inconsistency in the EU-27’s strategy is its incoherent attempts to justify not yet lifting sanctions. Some Europeans worry that the Syrian rebels, who ousted Assad and his Iranian and Russian allies on 8 December, would violate women’s and minorities’ rights. Despite the exact contrary on the ground.
Maintaining these sanctions fully ignores the repeated calls by Syrian women’s organisations’ to lift them, as that would empower Syrian women with better access to education and higher revenues.
I will never forget my visit to Jordan’s Al Azraq refugee camp last year, in the middle of the desert. The future looked bleak for these Syrian women. Their men had been killed, they had fled and had to support themselves, making painful decisions on when to marry their daughters to protect them from soldiers, or when to pull them from school to work and bring meagre revenues to survive. Their daily economic contortions to feed their families will not cease if sanctions remain.
How can the 27 governments, of which only three are led by a woman, go as far as maintaining sanctions on a war-ravaged country to allegedly champion women's rights, when they are backtracking on those rights themselves?
It is actually significant that a former jihadi leader ordered his security forces to let women dress freely, appointed women as governor of the Central Bank or as minister. Instead of alleviating some of the suffering of these women and encouraging Syria's reconstruction, the EU is keeping its country-wide sanctions preemptively.
Another striking example of a lack of focus is the claim to protect Syria's religious and ethnic minorities. Whether Christian or Druze, Alawite or Kurdish, all of Syria's components have been remarkably united in wanting sanctions to be lifted.
Unfortunately many in Europe fell into the trap of online disinformation and believed Christians were massacred despite Syrian Christian leaders from Latakia to Aleppo denying it. The risk of violence is real after 53 years of sectarian politics, which is why the new authorities have consistently engaged with minorities.
I have worked on EU-Syria sanctions since 2011, I have rarely seen such strong consensus within Syria's diverse society to call for sectoral sanctions to be fully lifted. Aimless and outdated, they will only fuel popular resentment, which will be exploited by Iran and Russia — the latter has already confirmed it will happily continue to issue Syria's banknotes.
While it is true that US sanctions remain an essential impediment regardless, the EU must have a coherent policy of its own on Syria.
Contrary to the US, the EU will have to live with the consequences of more instability in the Middle East. Syrian refugees may not be able to rebuild their country. Russia, Iran and Hezbollah, who have no sectoral sanctions on Syria, will return as Syria's main providers of energy with oil tankers, loans with financial institutions, even salaries through drug trafficking.
Worst of all perhaps, without sufficient economic resources, thousands of Syrians will have no choice but to join armed groups again. State employees will be forced to return to their old patrons, including pro-Assad militias. ISIS will find new recruits who need to survive one way or another. This means empowering sectarian politics with a high risk of more conflict.
At last, a final inconsistency: how the EU-27 is dealing with Syria's new authorities and their leader Al Sharaa. Leaders like France's Emmanuel Macron have invited him to Europe, announcing the re-opening of EU embassies in Damascus.
Their intelligence services have cooperated with Al Sharaa for years to combat ISIS and al Qaeda in Syria, Ukrainian intelligence even trained his soldiers last year.
And yet they remain designated as terrorists, creating a legal conundrum for civil society to interact with new authorities. As yet another hazy precondition to lifting sanctions, the EU is calling for an inclusive dialogue with terrorists it warmly hosted in Brussels last week. This is not a strategy. It's a farce.
Lest we forget, the EU's legacy on Syria is remarkable, beyond the billions it has spent to alleviate the suffering of refugees. Its consistent fight against impunity in Syria has been decisive at the UN to uphold the rights of half a million victims.
In the darkest days, when many non-EU countries were normalising relations with Assad, most EU countries resisted attempts to normalise.
Today's inaction will backfire against Europe's strategic interests in the region. Syrians deserve more than empty words.
Schams El Ghoneimi was policy adviser for Middle East and North Africa for Renew Europe at the European Parliament until February 2025. He was Crisis Action's political analyst on Syria during the Arab spring.
Schams El Ghoneimi was policy adviser for Middle East and North Africa for Renew Europe at the European Parliament until February 2025. He was Crisis Action's political analyst on Syria during the Arab spring.