Kaja Kallas’s Pakistan visit and the EU’s dangerous capitulation |
There are moments in diplomacy when neutrality is not balance but evasion. Kaja Kallas’s handling of Pakistan is one of those moments.
After the Pahalgam terror attack, the European Union began correctly. It condemned terrorism and acknowledged that no cause can justify the killing of civilians. But almost immediately, the statement slipped into the familiar fog of European crisis management, urging “both parties” to exercise restraint, “both sides” to de-escalate, and India and Pakistan to return to dialogue. The language sounded responsible. In reality, it was a capitulation to Pakistan’s preferred narrative. It took a terror attack and converted it into a symmetrical dispute.
That is precisely the diplomatic trap Islamabad has perfected over decades. First comes the attack. Then comes denial. Then comes the appeal to internationalize the crisis. Finally, the victim’s response is placed on the same moral plane as the violence that provoked it. When Brussels uses this vocabulary, it may believe it is lowering tensions. In practice, it rewards the very ambiguity that allows Pakistan to escape accountability. Brussels has done this with the PLO and with Iran, with only disastrous consequences.
Kallas’s visit to Islamabad on 1 June 2026 makes this problem even more serious. The EU has presented the trip as a bilateral visit and as part of the 8th EU-Pakistan Strategic Dialogue, with meetings scheduled with President Asif Ali Zardari, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Pakistan’s Chief of Defence Forces, Field Marshal Asim Munir. The dialogue is framed as an opportunity to deepen cooperation under the EU-Pakistan Strategic Engagement Plan signed in 2019.
But diplomacy is not only about agenda papers. It is also about timing, optics and political meaning. Coming........