A divided EU has demanded a role in next week’s negotiations with Russia over the Ukraine crisis and broader issues of European defense, after Vladimir Putin succeeded in sidelining the bloc in favour of talks with the US and NATO, Financial Times reports.
EU officials speaking to the Financial Times expressed frustration at the way negotiations in Geneva and Brussels were arranged - with Russian officials set to discuss the security of Ukraine and the whole European continent with counterparts from both Washington and the US-led military alliance.
While US officials have remained in close contact with those in Brussels and in individual EU states, Washington has not sought to alter Moscow’s proposed negotiations. Brussels “cannot be a neutral spectator in the negotiations” over Europe’s future security architecture, EU’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said on Tuesday as he started a three-day visit to Ukraine.
The sidelining underscored Brussels’ lack of foreign policy clout amid divergent views on how to handle Russia and internal disagreements over the EU’s own security policy, the EU officials said, pointing to the inability of its 27 members to agree on a long-planned statement of co-operation with NATO.
“This is not a theoretical exercise right now, it is about real threats,” a senior EU government minister said of the debate over co-operation with NATO.
While Brussels is overlooked, some member states have instead sought bilateral contacts with Russia. Germany and France have stepped up diplomatic efforts, with German chancellor Olaf Scholz’s new foreign policy adviser Jens Plötner and his French counterpart Emmanuel Bonne travelling this week to Moscow for talks with senior Russian officials. The two will also meet Ukrainian officials this week for separate discussions.
But in a sign of the EU’s discord, Mario Draghi, Italy’s prime minister, admitted last month that Europe had few ways to deter Russian action against Ukraine. “The EU’s limited role in the discussion with Moscow is a natural reflection of its own lack of unity,” said Andrew Weiss, vice-president of the Russia and Eurasia program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
“Moscow has literally zero interest in engaging with the EU as such.” The Ukraine crisis has taken place as the EU debate about its role as a defense actor has intensified. Twenty-one of the EU’s 27 member states are also members of NATO, and many - particularly those in eastern Europe - see the transatlantic alliance as their primary protection against external threats such as Russia.
The NATO-EU statement, which is being drafted by Jens Stoltenberg, NATO secretary-general, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen and Charles Michel, European Council president, has been billed by officials from both organizations as an uncontroversial update to previous NATO-EU declarations of co-operation signed in 2016 and 2018.
