Parliament session, headed by Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, on April 25, 2024. (Credit: Mohammad Yassin/L'Orient Today)
Parliament will convene next Wednesday, May 15, to discuss the financial package of $1 billion to support its faltering economy and its security forces offered by the EU last week, Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri's office announced on Tuesday.
EU chief Ursula von der Leyen last week announced $1 billion in aid for Lebanon during a visit to Lebanon and urged it to tackle illegal migration to the bloc.
Since its announcement on Thursday, a large part of the Lebanese political class denounced the aid package as an attempt to “bribe” the Lebanese into accepting the continued presence of Syrian migrants on its territory.
These accusations have been denied by caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati. A Western diplomatic source told L'Orient Today that the Europeans have no intention of settling Syrians on Lebanese territory.
Among the criticism voiced against the deal, Free Patriotic Movement leader Gebran Bassil said on Saturday that the country did not need money but rather a "political decision" to send migrants back to Syria. The next day, Maronite Patriarch Bechara al-Rai urged Lebanon not to succumb to European Union "pressure and temptations."
On Tuesday, FPM's "Strong Lebanon" parliamentary bloc met caretaker Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib who is close to their party to discuss the aid. "We refuse any agreement with the EU or bargain that would jeopardize Lebanon's rights," FPM MP Nicholas Sehnaoui was quoted by the state-run National News Agency as saying. He insisted that Syrian presence in Lebanon is "an existential cause." "What is happening in Lebanon is an ethnic cleansing of citizens to replace them with others, and this is not less important than the genocide that is happening in occupied Palestine," Sehnaoui stated.
According to official figures from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), there are 1.5 million Syrians in Lebanon, of whom 779,645 are registered with the organization. In 2015, the Lebanese government suspended the registration of Syrian refugees with UNHCR.
According to the constitution, in the absence of the president, Parliament becomes an electoral body to the president, however, it has been occasionally meeting to legislate urgent laws.