European leaders' summit in Paris ends without consensus on sending peacekeepers to Ukraine
Macron has spoken with Trump before the meeting to prevent Europe from being excluded from the peace negotiations
ParisThe fear of a US-Russian deal to resolve the war in Ukraine behind the backs of Europe and Kiev has forced European countries to mobilize. After confirming during the Munich Security Conference this weekend that Washington wants to negotiate a solution to the conflict only with Moscow, French President Emmanuel Macron had called an emergency summit in Paris on Monday with the leaders of the main countries of the European Union - Germany, Poland, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands and Denmark - and also the United Kingdom.
The summit, however, has ended without any unified message and with divergences on the idea of sending European soldiers on the ground to guarantee peace when a ceasefire is reached in Ukraine. Germany, Spain and Poland lead the countries that have shown reluctance to debate the proposal, which they consider premature. "It is an inappropriate debate, at the wrong time and on the wrong subject," said bluntly the German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, who is playing for office this Sunday in the federal elections.
The Spanish Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, has expressed a similar opinion: "The conditions for peace have not yet been met, we cannot yet begin to think about the design" of the sending of troops, Sánchez warned in a press conference on Monday night.
Peace contingent
The idea, which France has long since floated, is that Europe should take on the role of guaranteeing security on the ground when there is a peace agreement in principle. The United States has ruled out NATO assuming the role and, therefore, the alternative would be for European soldiers to be deployed as a peace contingent. However, the leaders have insisted that the United States should also participate in this peace contingent. It would be the guarantee that Russia would not attack again.
Despite the reluctance of some countries on the continent, the Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom are in favour of the proposal to send soldiers when a peace agreement is reached. The British Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, has announced that London could "deploy British troops on the ground, if necessary", to ensure a "lasting peace" in Ukraine.
In any case, the summit on Monday, in which not all EU countries participated, was of an informal nature, and no concrete decisions were to be taken, beyond debating the strategy to follow in the face of the challenge from the United States. The president of the United States, Donald Trump, although at some point he has been ambiguous on the issue, plans to leave Europe out of the negotiating table. Last week he agreed with President Putin, without consulting either Kiev or Brussels, to start negotiations "immediately", and the first meetings between Russian and American officials are already scheduled for Tuesday in Saudi Arabia.
Call between Macron and Trump
Trump also said on Sunday that he would meet the Russian president "very soon." Putin also does not want Europe to sit down to negotiate. His foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said on Monday that it makes no sense for Europe to participate in the talks because "it wants the war to continue and is not willing to make territorial concessions." Before meeting with European leaders, Macron spoke by phone with Trump, according to sources at the Elysée, although the content of the conversation was not disclosed.
Europe's exclusion has set off alarm bells on the continent. Ukraine, located between the EU and Russia, is a key country for the security of European countries, and Trump's desire to leave the EU and Kiev aside to negotiate peace raises many misgivings. "Europe's security is at a turning point," said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Monday, also a guest at the informal summit in Paris alongside European Council President António Costa and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte. "This is about Ukraine, but it's also about us," von der Leyen said.
Distancing from Europe
Trump's return to the White House has meant a break with the policies of his predecessor, Joe Biden, also in foreign policy. The result is a radical change in the foreign strategy of the United States, with a dangerous rapprochement with Moscow and distancing from Europe. The EU countries are trying to measure the implications of this distancing and are beginning to assume that a new era of transatlantic relations is opening up in which Europe will have to guarantee its own security.
There is also a certain consensus in the EU on the need to increase the defence budget to increase its military sovereignty, one of the messages that has been heard most since Donald Trump came to power. Europe needs, now more than ever, more military sovereignty and less dependence on NATO, where the United States has a key role. "We must strengthen defence in Europe," Ursula Von der Leyen once again demanded at the end of the summit.
The EU is debating whether to relax fiscal discipline rules to allow member states to invest more, and some member states, such as Spain, are calling for a common debt issuance mechanism to be agreed within the framework of the EU to finance the increase in spending on security and defence. "There must be responsibility on the part of everyone," Pedro Sánchez has requested.
