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When Angelel Merkel arrived in Brussels on Thursday for her supposed last EU summit, her proposal was publicly criticized by Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, who told reporters that he would not participate in any talks with Putin.
Romanian President Klaus Iohannis said that too early to talk about the summit with Russia, Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas said he was surprised the issue was on the overall agenda.
According to a diplomat familiar with the debate, about 10 member states admitted they were uncomfortable with the idea itself or because it was raised at the last minute.
“The Kremlin does not understand any free concessions,” said Latvian Prime Minister Arturas Krišjanis Karinis. “The Kremlin understands the politics of force.”
Following US President Joe Biden’s meeting with Putin in Geneva last week, Merkel argues that the EU cannot simply delegate its relations with Russia to the White House and must shape its own destiny. The EU disagrees with the Kremlin on a number of issues, including events in Ukraine, Belarus and the Balkans.
“It is not enough for US President Joe Biden to talk to the Russian President, and I very much welcome that dialogue, the European Union must also develop a format for negotiations with Russia,” Merkel told the lower house of the German parliament earlier. Departing for the EU capital, she, together with French President Emmanuel Macron, intended to host a meeting with Putin.
Their goal is to work with the Russian president while curbing his ambitions, and they also want to prevent individual member states from crossing the border when it comes to Russian policy, said an EU official who agreed to speak anonymously.
Accusations of Russian-backed cyberattacks, extrajudicial killings, and the poisoning and imprisonment of notorious dissident Alexei Navaln have fueled tensions in the 27-member community over how to respond to the Kremlin. Any proposal to start negotiations is met with resistance from member states, especially the Baltic countries, who demand a more categorical position, the official said.
“We need to have a strong dialogue with Russia to defend our interests as Europeans,” Macron said. – This dialogue is essential for stability on the European continent. We cannot continue to rely solely on the logic of backlash against Russia, given what we saw a few weeks ago: a structured debate between President Biden and President Putin.
Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba called the Franco-German proposal a “dangerous departure from EU sanctions policy” after a meeting with EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell in Brussels. .
The 27-nation bloc wants to review its strategy to stop its vast eastern neighbor, and Brussels acknowledges that ties with the Kremlin are likely to deteriorate further, even though they are already at record lows.
EU-Russia relations have collapsed since March 2014, when Russia annexed Ukraine-owned Crimea. Recently, Moscow’s relations with a chain of Western capitals have been marred by the mobilization of Russian troops on Ukraine’s borders and a series of spy scandals and expulsions of diplomats.
Official conclusions from the summit say the bloc is “open to selective engagement with Russia in areas of EU concern,” such as climate change, health, the Iran deal and the conflicts in Syria and Libya.
The leaders said the EU would study “formats and conditions for dialogue with Russia”, but deleted the wording “including dialogue at the leadership level” in the draft text.
Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, who backed the proposals by France and Germany to negotiate with Putin, wrote on Twitter that “as a compromise, it must now be clarified which channels of dialogue may be useful.”
The leaders also said in their final statement that “a strong and coordinated response from the EU and its member states is needed to any other malicious, illegal and destructive activity by Russia.”
To this end, they have instructed the European Commission to “provide for additional restrictive measures, including economic sanctions”, which may be necessary.
The EU has not held a summit with Putin since the annexation of Crimea, and opponents of such a plan believe that Berlin and Paris should consult with other countries, including the most affected eastern countries, to propose a major change in strategy, the diplomat . saying.
They also criticized the idea of cooperating with Russia in fighting organized crime, especially since the EU blames the Kremlin for the attacks on its opponents in the UK and Germany.
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