DAMASCUS: Visiting EU Commissioner for the Mediterranean Dubravka Suica said on Thursday that a €175 million (nearly $183 million) package for Syria was a “clear message” of support for its reconstruction.

Suica announced the package in Damascus on Wednesday, saying it would focus on sectors including energy, education, health, and agriculture, helping rebuild Syria’s economy, support its institutions, and promote human rights.

“I came here ... with a clear message that we are here to assist and help Syria on its recovery,” Suica said in an interview on Thursday.

“We want that reconstruction and recovery will be Syria-owned and Syria-led,” she said, on the first visit by an EU commissioner since a transitional government was unveiled in late March.

“We want to see Syria be a regular, normal, democratic country in the future,” she added.

Syria has been navigating a delicate transition since Bashar Assad was ousted in December after nearly 14 years of civil war.

The EU announced last month it would lift economic sanctions on Syria in a bid to help its recovery.

“This is a pivotal moment — a new chapter in EU-Syria relations,” Suica said on X, calling her meeting with President Ahmad Al-Sharaa “constructive.”

Like Syria’s neighbors, Western governments are keen to steer it onto the road to stability after the war triggered an exodus of millions of refugees.

Refugee returns should be “safe, voluntary and dignified,” Suica said.

The EU has not designated Syria as a safe country for returns “because we don’t want to push people to come here and then they don’t have a home,” she said.

The EU last month sanctioned three Syrian groups and two of their leaders for human rights abuses over their alleged involvement in sectarian massacres in the coastal heartland of the Alawite minority, to which Assad belongs, in March.

“We cannot pronounce one part of Syria safe and another not,” Suica said, noting that designating Syria a safe country needs “unanimity among 27 European member states.”

She said Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad Al-Shaibani would attend a ministerial meeting involving almost a dozen Mediterranean countries in Brussels on June 23.

A statement released on Wednesday said that the European Commission was “actively pursuing the integration of Syria into several key initiatives with its Mediterranean partner countries.”

“We want to see Syria united and inclusive, Suica said. 

“This is a process. It will happen step by step.”