DUBLIN — EU leaders gathering in Dublin on Friday will continue arguing over who should represent them in talks about Ukraine’s future after a day of ferocious diplomatic activity.
As Donald Trump’s administration intensifies its efforts to broker an end to Russia’s war and Europe may have secured a place at the table, bickering over who will speak on behalf of the bloc already looks like overshadowing the summit in the Irish capital — that wasn’t even supposed to be about Ukraine in the first place.
“You could even have a TV show about it,” Estonian Prime Minister Kristen Michal joked to POLITICO in an interview on Thursday, in a sign of just how stark the divisions have become among leaders. “But we are saving the best part for tomorrow.”
Russia’s full-scale invasion started in February 2022 and as Trump’s enthusiasm for brokering peace has ebbed and flowed, the EU has found itself edged out of the picture ― despite increasingly picking up the tab.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who met with about 50 EU and non-EU leaders in Dublin on Thursday, warned that Russia was seeking to reshape Europe’s security architecture and insisted that European governments must have a voice in the negotiations, following two days of Russia-Ukraine-U.S. negotiations in Abu Dhabi that largely left out the EU.
Trump’s envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, discussed the issue with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow earlier on Thursday before the American pair touched down in Dublin in the evening to offer Zelenskyy their thoughts.
The EU is united over the need to have a seat at the table as Ukraine’s main backer, but not on who it should send, with diplomats and officials telling POLITICO that the bloc has split into at least three camps.
In one, there is growing support for European Council President António Costa, whose role makes him the natural candidate to represent the bloc. In another, there’s France and Germany, both of which are reluctant to surrender their own places at the negotiating table to Brussels.
And then there’s the loneliest camp of all, the backers of Kaja Kallas. The bloc’s top diplomat would be the obvious pick, if not for her hawkishness on Russia, which some diplomats say could put off the Kremlin and make her a liability.
Costa is accountable
When it comes to speaking for Europe, there’s one man who’s already got that in his job description.
Costa is emerging as the most broadly acceptable candidate among EU capitals. His institutional role gives him a mandate to represent the bloc’s leaders on the world stage, while his position and background as a former Portuguese prime minister afford him some neutrality, according to a European diplomat, who was granted anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the discussions.
Estonia’s Michal was the first leader to come out in support of Costa, telling POLITICO his “mandate comes directly from the [European] Council” and makes him “accountable” to the EU’s member countries.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who called for the issue to be added to the agenda of Friday’s talks, said she would be OK with Costa, while Luxembourg and Poland’s leaders also backed him in remarks to reporters Thursday.
Costa himself has also made it clear that the EU is represented internationally by its institutions — meaning him.
Kallas, however, is a much more divisive proposition.
Some diplomats see the former Estonian prime minister, who an EU official once said eats “Russians for “breakfast,” as an unacceptable interlocutor for the Kremlin.
“That’s a joke, right?” another European diplomat said of the prospect of Kallas representing the EU in the high-stakes talks, describing her as “probably the worst person you could pick.”
But others argue that it’s precisely this hawkish reputation that makes her the right person for the job. “It would make much more sense,” a second senior European diplomat told POLITICO. “That’s what Putin would do. He would pick whoever you don’t want to talk to.”
Michal argued Kallas’ role makes her a natural second to Costa, and that both will presumably be in their positions until their terms end in 2029, making them more reliable than a national leader. “Putin doesn’t have to like it,” he added.
Paris and Berlin are less keen
The biggest obstacle to choosing a negotiator, though, might not be Putin but the EU’s two biggest capitals.
France and Germany are unlikely to welcome an arrangement that gives Brussels a monopoly on representing Europe in negotiations, two European diplomats and an EU official told POLITICO.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz made his opposition clear Thursday, calling the participation of the E3 countries in talks on Ukraine “a well-established format.”
“We are also working together on this task with five representatives — from Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, and Poland. I see absolutely no problem with keeping it that way,” he said.
Paris also has little incentive to hand over its seat at the table. France is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council and possesses Europe’s only nuclear arsenal, giving it diplomatic and military leverage that no EU institution can replicate, French MEP Fabrice Leggeri of National Rally told POLITICO, adding he could “hardly imagine” Costa or Kallas speaking for Paris.
“France, Germany, and the U.K.,” the E3 countries, “will always be France, Germany and the U.K.,” Estonia’s Michal argued, adding nothing stopped them from talking bilaterally to Moscow. But on decision-making affecting the whole continent, they needed to get on board with “consensual politics.”
“This is what the European Union is,” he said. “This is the basis of having this kind of consensual politics and keeping everybody together on the same page against Russia.”
EU leaders are unlikely to formally appoint an envoy at Friday’s gathering, but discussions could produce a broader “understanding” about how Europe should be represented, a senior EU official said.
