European Union foreign ministers gathered in Brussels on Tuesday for an emergency session on the Iran war’s mounting economic and humanitarian spillover, agreeing on a coordinated evacuation framework for EU nationals still in the Gulf region and on a fresh package of energy contingency measures aimed at the bloc’s most exposed southern and eastern members. The meeting, called at the request of EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas and chaired alongside Belgian Foreign Minister Maxime Prevot, lasted nearly seven hours and produced what diplomats described as the most operationally specific European response to the conflict since strikes began in early March.

Kallas, addressing reporters at the Europa building after the session, said the bloc’s twenty-seven member states had endorsed a joint consular task force that would centralize the repatriation of European citizens from Iraq, Bahrain, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, with priority placed on roughly 4,300 EU nationals who remained on consular registries in those four countries. “Europe will not allow its citizens to be stranded by a war they did not start and have no role in,” Kallas said. “We will also not permit the economic shock of this conflict to fall disproportionately on a handful of member states.”

Under the new arrangement, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands will pool transport capacity through the existing EU Civil Protection Mechanism, with charter flights routed through Larnaca, Cyprus, and through Muscat under an agreement quietly secured with the Omani foreign ministry last week. German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock told the session that Berlin had already moved two Airbus A400M military transports to Larnaca and was prepared to expand the rotation if conditions in the Gulf deteriorated further.

European energy ministers, meeting in a parallel room at the same building, signed off on a second tranche of joint gas purchases under the AggregateEU platform, totaling roughly 18 billion cubic meters, and committed to a temporary easing of state-aid rules so that countries such as Hungary, Slovakia, Bulgaria and Greece could subsidize energy bills for low-income households without triggering Commission objections. European Commissioner for Energy Dan Jorgensen said the measures were intended to “absorb the immediate shock, not to replace longer-term diversification,” a line aimed at reassuring market participants worried that Europe might revert to subsidies as a permanent crutch.

“What we saw in 2022 was that fragmentation was Europe’s biggest enemy in an energy crisis, and the lesson has stuck,” said Henrik Lindstrom, a senior fellow at the Bruegel think tank in Brussels who briefed several delegations ahead of the meeting. “The political will to act jointly is much higher than it was three years ago.” Lindstrom noted that the bloc’s gas storage levels, at 38 percent of capacity heading into April, remained adequate but had drawn down faster than expected since Iranian strikes on Saudi infrastructure earlier in March pushed Asian buyers back into the European LNG market.

The Brussels session also addressed a thornier political question — how Europe should position itself diplomatically as the Islamabad talks gained traction without an EU seat at the table. Several southern member states, led by Italy and Greece, pushed for the bloc to formally request observer status alongside Qatar, arguing that European exposure to the war’s consequences justified a direct voice in any framework discussions. The proposal was ultimately deferred after objections from France and the Baltic states, who worried that visible lobbying for a seat would weaken European leverage if the talks stalled and broader sanctions discussions resumed.

Instead, the ministers tasked Kallas with conducting what she called “intensive shuttle consultations” with the Islamabad mediators over the coming week, including a planned visit to Riyadh and Cairo on Thursday and a videoconference with Pakistani Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar already scheduled for Wednesday morning. French Foreign Minister Stephane Sejourne said after the meeting that Europe’s role was “to support, not to crowd,” but added that any eventual ceasefire monitoring arrangement would inevitably require European naval and intelligence assets and that the bloc was preparing to contribute on that front.

The session was not without friction. Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto, who arrived an hour late from a separate bilateral visit to Belgrade, repeated his government’s objection to any sanctions-style measures targeting Russian intermediaries who had reportedly facilitated Iranian crude transfers since strikes began. Szijjarto’s intervention was met with what one diplomat in the room described as “patient irritation” from other delegations, and the final communique made no reference to secondary sanctions. Hungarian officials later told reporters that Budapest had agreed to the consular and energy elements of the package but had registered reservations on the diplomatic language regarding “third-country actors.”

European business groups welcomed the outcome cautiously. Markus Beyrer, director general of BusinessEurope, said the joint gas purchasing extension and the temporary state-aid flexibility would buy time for European manufacturers facing input-cost pressures, but warned that “the longer the war runs, the more difficult it will be for European industry to compete with American and Asian rivals whose energy costs have moved much less.” Industrial electricity prices in Germany and Italy have risen roughly 22 and 31 percent respectively since early March, according to figures circulated at the meeting, with chemical and metals producers bearing the heaviest burden.

Outside the Europa building, several hundred demonstrators organized by a coalition of European peace and faith groups gathered through the afternoon, calling for an immediate ceasefire and a suspension of dual-use exports to Israel. Kallas, asked about the protest as she left, said she shared its urgency and that “every European action this week is in service of bringing this war to an end.”

Ministers said they would reconvene on April 14 in Luxembourg unless conditions on the ground required an earlier session, and that the consular task force would begin operating from a coordination center in Cyprus within forty-eight hours. EU officials said additional measures, including a possible humanitarian airlift to Jordan, would be announced in the days ahead.