EU Council and Woolwich

At the European Council for Heads of State and Government, which I attended, there was not a long discussion about the Syrian arms embargo. The work was done by my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary. There was strong support, though, from the French Government and there was some support from the Italian Government. Some of those countries that have newly joined the EU from the Balkans recognise the arguments that I was making about the mistakes that the west made with respect to Bosnia, so it is important to listen to them as well. The point about the EU arms embargo—this may be a point that colleagues on the Government Benches will particularly recognise—is that we decide our foreign policy as a nation state. In Europe, if we can agree something unanimously, we can have a combined position, but in the end this is something that we decide as an independent nation state.