External Contribution: Julien Barnes-Dacey, Director of the Middle East & North Africa programme at the European Council on Foreign Relations

By Julien Barnes-Dacey, Director of the Middle East & North Africa program at the European Council on Foreign Relations

Since Ahmad al-Sharaa seized power in Damascus in December 2024, European states have been at the forefront of international efforts to support a stabilizing transition, offering strong political engagement, economic support, and wider societal outreach.

But despite this push, Europe is clearly a second-tier actor compared to the US, Türkiye, and Arab Gulf states, and there is a clear sense of a lack of deeper strategic engagement between the two sides. One year after Assad’s departure, high-level European focus on Syria risks dwindling, while Damascus rarely—if at all—looks to Europe as a truly decisive partner. This is a mistake on both sides: it devalues a relationship that should be at the heart of addressing core respective strategic interests. 

For all of Damascus’s understandable focus on US sanctions lifting and big-ticket Gulf investments, European support is still important to holding the fragile new Syria together and future engagement could be critical to cementing a stable state. For Europeans a functioning Syria is the only direct pathway to addressing core interests, including delivering improved conditions that persuade more refugees to return home and reducing Syrian economic ties to Russia. Some Europeans are still framing progress on these steps as the necessary pre-condition rather than the outcome of European support. Both sides should now do more to imbue the relationship with greater strategic focus.

This can build off an acknowledgment that Europeans—including not just EU states and institutions, but also key states like the UK, Norway, and Switzerland—have already taken significant steps to support the country’s transition. Politically, senior European officials were among the first to travel to Damascus, with the French, German and Italian Foreign Ministers all visiting in January 2025—even before visits by the Saudi and Qatari foreign ministers. In early February, President Macron extended the first invitation to al-Sharaa to visit a Western country, with the new president’s visit to Paris taking place in May 2025, six months before he met President Trump in Washington. These efforts were central to international legitimation of the new government. They have been accompanied by wider political initiatives, including French efforts to support an agreement between Damascus and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). The EU also hosted its annual Day of Dialogue inside Syria in November 2025, reflecting the strong European focus on the centrality of civil society to meaningful stability.

On the economic front, Europeans likewise moved decisively—with key energy, transportation, and financial sector measures lifted in February and an end to “all economic restrictive measures with the exception of those based on security grounds” in May 2025. This last measure followed President Trump’s announcement of US exemptions and waivers, but the European step was immediate and comprehensive. 

Europeans quickly delivered significant financial support. While most attention is on the Arab Gulf states, which are delivering critical energy supplies and dazzling multi-billion-dollar investment MOUs focused on infrastructure projects (that may or may not ever be implemented), European support has nonetheless been substantial. Amid a collapse in US aid, EU states committed EUR 2.5 billion in support for 2025 and 2026 at the bloc’s March pledging conference. European states have already dispersed hundreds of millions of Euros this year—more in direct aid than nearly all other states—including in key sectors such as agriculture and health. This reflects Europe’s longstanding role as the biggest donor to the Syria crisis. 

This picture of European support does not distract from the absolute centrality of full US sanctions relief as the gateway to economic rehabilitation, given US dominance of the global financial system. It also does not distract from the critical support already provided by regional states, as well as their promise of significant inflows in the years ahead. But it should highlight that Europeans are still important players in prospects for Syria’s successful rebirth.

Yet the depth of strategic engagement between the two sides does not reflect this reality. Amid the new leadership’s single-minded focus on US sanctions lifting and regional integration, European engagement appears marginal to Damascus’s thinking. Damascus seems to be treating Europeans as an afterthought – with al-Sharaa having made no further trips to European capitals even as he has toured the region, visited the US twice, and even headed to Moscow. For its part, the high-level European push also appears to be fading, with senior ministerial visits decreasing and the intense initial focus on a positive transition increasingly overtaken by other pressures. This is borne out by the intense internal political criticism faced by the German foreign minister—one of the few to visit Syria recently—after he stated that conditions are not yet good enough for refugee returns. 

While US envoy Tom Barrack works intensely to shape Trump’s Syria agenda, criss-crossing the region on an almost daily basis to forge economic and diplomatic openings and placing the US at the center of Syria dynamics, there is no comparable European figure. Kaja Kallas, the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs, who is charged with forging a common European approach, has still not visited Syria, nor has she moved to appoint a high-level envoy empowered to coordinate strategic engagement, shape an ambitious partnership roadmap, and ensure that the European voice is powerfully heard. This could extend to much closer alignment with Arab Gulf States, who are now looking for more efficient deployment of their resources compared to the open largesse of past decades. This combined approach could translate into greater European geopolitical weight, including to push issues related to political inclusivity, the role of civil society, and accountability, which remain key to securing meaningful stability.

This disconnect needs to be overcome. Damascus should see the value of Europe’s offer alongside the contributions of other key international stakeholders, recognizing that if US sanctions are fully lifted, Europe could play a vital role in boosting economic support and investment—and providing unique technical and capacity support desperately needed for meaningful state regeneration. With international aid cuts deepening, heightening the importance of private sector engagement for Syria’s eventual recovery, it should also not be forgotten that the EU was Syria’s biggest trading partner prior to the uprising—a relationship that could once again play an important role in years to come.

For their part, Europeans need to ensure that Syria remains a strategic priority—with governments working harder to make the domestic case for this approach. Ultimately, the prospect of voluntary refugee returns or diminished Russian influence hangs on supporting a stable and functioning Syrian state—one that is politically inclusive and secure,  and able to forestall the still real risk of a relapse into violence and a new unraveling. Europeans and Syrians will disagree on many issues moving forward, but there is now space and a need for more strategic engagement.