On Thursday 18 July, the United Kingdom will host a summit of the European Political Community (EPC), attended by 47 leaders, to discuss issues including Ukraine.
The summit, to be held at Blenheim Palace, the birthplace of Winston Churchill, will include an opening plenary session, followed by three round tables on migration, energy and connectivity, and the defence of democracy, before concluding with a final plenary session.
The Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky, will be taking part in the summit, alongside the 27 EU countries, the host country (the United Kingdom) and Turkey.
This summit will be held less than 2 weeks after the Labour Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, came to power. “I said I would change the way the UK engages with our European partners [...], that work starts at the European Political Community meeting on Thursday”, he declared, as quoted in a Downing Street statement. After the Brexit vote in 2016, the new Prime Minister wants to “rebuild relationships with key European partners”.
In the margins of the summit, Mr Starmer will meet the Irish Prime Minister, Simon Harris, and have dinner with the French President, Emmanuel Macron.
This summit demonstrates “the importance of unity in response to the arc of conflict and instability inside and near Europe’s borders”, according to the press release.
The European Political Community was born in October 2022 with the ambition of strengthening cohesion, cooperation and dialogue between European countries. This is the fourth EPC summit.
For the first time, NATO, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe and the Council of Europe will be present.
Europe is facing “some of the greatest challenges of our time”, said Mr Starmer, citing “Russia’s barbaric war” in Ukraine. The Prime Minister has already stated that the UK’s support for Ukraine is “unwavering”.
The summit will be “a platform to push for continued international military and financial support for Ukraine, ahead of what is expected to be a difficult winter”, according to Downing Street.
The UK plans to launch a ‘call to action’ with a group of European nations to sanction the so-called ‘shadow’ tanker fleet that Russia uses to circumvent international sanctions, according to documents seen by Bloomberg.
In addition to this conflict, the leaders will discuss immigration, energy and the defence of democracy.
As far as democracy is concerned, the question is “how to define and secure our democracies. It’s more or less the same kind of discussion on security that we’ve had in the past, but the debate will be more focused on foreign interference, on how we protect our democracies from influence and disinformation”, said a European diplomat on Monday 15 July.
The second theme, of great importance to many delegations, is migration. “How can we work together on these issues? How can we tackle illegal immigration? How do you create legal pathways? We are dealing with many issues at EU level, but we need partners and neighbours to discuss this subject”, said this source. Finally, with regard to energy connectivity, one of the subjects already identified in the past, the continent’s leaders want to continue to cooperate and discuss this issue.
“I think it will be a fruitful meeting”, ventured one European diplomat.
New relationship with the United Kingdom. “As far as we are concerned, things are going well, even if we are at the beginning of this relationship”, said a European diplomat (see EUROPE 13447/14).
The EPC is not the ideal forum for discussing EU/UK relations, although the proposals to be put forward by the British Prime Minister will be assessed with an “open mind”.
For the time being, the EU is sticking to the implementation of the current agreements, the Windsor Framework and the Good Friday Agreement (GFA). “We could benefit from closer cooperation on foreign affairs and defence, but we’ll have to see how that translates into reality”, stressed one European diplomat.
The next EPC meeting will take place in Hungary on 7 November 2024 (see EUROPE 13377/25). The third EPC meeting took place in Spain (see EUROPE 13265/1). (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)