Dublin summit overshadowed by row over Europe’s voice in Ukraine talks

EU leaders gathering in Dublin on Friday are expected to keep arguing over who should represent them in talks on Ukraine’s future, after a day of intense diplomatic activity.

Donald Trump’s administration is stepping up efforts to broker an end to Russia’s war, and Europe may have secured a place at the table. But the dispute over who will speak for the bloc already looks set to overshadow the summit in the Irish capital, which was not originally meant to focus on Ukraine.

“You could even have a TV show about it,” Estonian Prime Minister Kristen Michal joked to POLITICO in an interview on Thursday, a sign of how stark the divisions among leaders have become. “But we are saving the best part for tomorrow.”

Russia’s full-scale invasion began in February 2022. As Trump’s enthusiasm for brokering peace has ebbed and flowed, the EU has been edged out of the picture, despite increasingly picking up the tab.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met about 50 EU and non-EU leaders in Dublin on Thursday. He warned that Russia was seeking to reshape Europe’s security architecture and insisted that European governments must have a voice in the negotiations. Two days of Russia-Ukraine-U.S. talks in Abu Dhabi had 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. They then arrived in Dublin in the evening to offer Zelenskyy their thoughts.

The EU is united on the need for a seat at the table as Ukraine’s main backer, but not on who should take it. Diplomats and officials told POLITICO the bloc has split into at least three camps.

One camp is growing in support of European Council President António Costa, whose role makes him the natural candidate to represent the bloc. In another are France and Germany, both reluctant to give up their own places at the negotiating table to Brussels.

The third, and the smallest, backs Kaja Kallas. The EU’s top diplomat would be the obvious pick, were it not for her hawkishness on Russia, which some diplomats say could put off the Kremlin and make her a liability.

Costa seen as most broadly acceptable

Costa is emerging as the most broadly acceptable candidate among EU capitals, according to a European diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the discussions. His institutional role gives him a mandate to represent the bloc’s leaders on the world stage, the diplomat said, while his background as a former Portuguese prime minister affords him some neutrality.

Michal was the first leader to back Costa. He told POLITICO that Costa’s “mandate comes directly from the [European] Council,” which makes him “accountable” to 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 fine with Costa. The leaders of Luxembourg and Poland also backed him in remarks to reporters on Thursday. Costa himself has made clear that the EU is represented internationally by its institutions, which means him.

Kallas is a more divisive proposition. Some diplomats see the former Estonian prime minister, of whom an EU official once said she eats “Russians for breakfast,” as an unacceptable interlocutor for the Kremlin.

“That’s a joke, right?” another European diplomat said of the idea of Kallas representing the EU in the talks, calling her “probably the worst person you could pick.”

Others argue that her hawkish reputation is precisely what makes her right 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 that Kallas’s role makes her a natural second to Costa. He said both will presumably remain in their posts until their terms end in 2029, making them more reliable than a national leader. “Putin doesn’t have to like it,” he added.

The biggest obstacle to choosing a negotiator, however, might not be Putin but the EU’s two biggest capitals. Two European diplomats and an EU official told POLITICO that France and Germany are unlikely to welcome an arrangement giving Brussels a monopoly on representing Europe in negotiations.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz made his opposition clear on 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 give up its seat, according to French MEP Fabrice Leggeri of the National Rally. He told POLITICO that France is a permanent member of the UN Security Council and has Europe’s only nuclear arsenal, giving it diplomatic and military leverage that no EU institution can replicate. He added that he could “hardly imagine” Costa or Kallas speaking for Paris.

Michal said France, Germany and the U.K. “will always be France, Germany and the U.K.” He added that nothing stopped them from talking bilaterally to Moscow, but that on decisions 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 on Friday, but the discussions could produce a broader “understanding” on how Europe should be represented, a senior EU official said. Irish Foreign Minister Helen McEntee told POLITICO that leaders will still need to “tease through” the issue “a little bit more” at Friday’s talks.

Time may be short. Zelenskyy urged the EU this week to hurry up and pick someone to speak for it. “I think that in November, not later, we need to accept who will represent Europe in negotiations,” he said.