Midday brief, in brief

Today at Commission, post-Rome and Saudi arms row

The Rome summit is over, now back to work.

After a busy weekend celebrating the 60th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Rome, it was back to business as usual in Brussels.

Well, there was a spot of backslapping first, with Margaritis Schinas, the Commission’s chief spokesman, starting Monday’s midday briefing with a series of announcements from EU leaders about Saturday’s ceremony in Italy, which was dubbed “a new chapter for our Union. Rome is the start, not the end of the process.”

Elsewhere, foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini and her team do not want to get involved in the latest Belgian political spat.

On Sunday, Alexander De Croo, Belgium’s Flemish center-right minister for development cooperation, called for the Belgian arms industry to stop selling weapons to Saudi Arabia because of their use in the conflict in Yemen. That would hit Wallonia, home to FN Herstal, especially hard.

Paul Magnette, the minister-president of Wallonia, said he was not against the idea but a EU-wide embargo “was out of the question” for Mogherini, according to Le Vif.

Nabila Massrali, Mogherni’s spokeswoman, said on the podium on Monday that “having an EU-wide embargo on firearms trade, you need the unanimity of EU countries,” adding that foreign affairs ministers could discuss the issue next Monday as the situation in Yemen will be on the agenda of their meeting in Luxembourg. “Selling firearms is a competence of EU countries,” Massrali pointed out.

Schinas said negotiations on the Greek bailout program are making “significant progress” and the Commission believes — as Jean-Claude Juncker told Prime Minister Alexis Tspiras on Friday — that agreement could be reached at the next eurozone finance ministers meeting on April 7.

Asked if that timetable was likely or if Juncker was being naive, Schinas said he boss spoke with “weight … And when he speaks, we are quiet.”

Juncker is also drafting a formal letter of congratulation to Boyko Borisov of the Bulgarian center-right, whose party won a snap general election on Sunday.

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