CAN THE UK RELAUNCH THE EUROPEAN POLITICAL COMMUNITY AT ITS
Mar 8, 2024 23:02:05 GMT -6
Post by account_disabled on Mar 8, 2024 23:02:05 GMT -6
After only three meetings, the European Political Community is losing momentum. When the UK hosts its next summit in 2024, its government should urge G20-style and other reforms such as working groups, taskforces, visits by leaders of non-member countries, and post-summit communiqués." 18 December, 2023 News In Spanish , News , European Union The European Political Community (EPC) was launched on the initiative of French President Emmanuel Macron. It held its first three meetings in the space of a year, the last being in Granada on 5 October 2023. The Granada summit was low key, with one blog describing the way ahead for the EPC as being “ambition or oblivion”. The UK is scheduled to host the EPC's fourth summit in spring 2024. If Sunak plays host, he will make sure that irregular migration is high on the agenda, but that should not be allowed to dominate, and reform of the EPC should be on the agenda too. Relaunching President Macron's favored project would make short-term sense for Sunak as well as longer-term sense for the EPC. It would equally make sense for opposition leader Keir Starmer if an early election propelled him into office as Prime Minister before the summit took place.
Leaders of more than 40 countries have attended EPC summits so far, along with Presidents of the European Council, the European Commission, and the European Parliament, and the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. The summits to date have allowed President Zelensky of Ukraine to meet European leaders and seek their support in resisting Russian aggression, and they in turn have pledged that support. This has provided a unifying theme which has helped hold the EPC together. Summits have also provided the 10 countries seeking EU membership with opportunities to meet the leaders of EU countries USA Phone Number and to network with them. A summit marred by absences and a row over the agenda Granada was the summit where expected talks on the Armenia/Azerbaijan conflict – following on from meetings on the margins of the first two summits – failed to materialize. The President of Azerbaijan did not attend the Granada summit, nor did his ally President Erdoğan of Turkey, who had “caught a cold”. This was the second EPC summit missed by Erdoğan. In the run-up to the Granada summit, Rishi Sunak and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni were reported to be angry that host country Spain had refused to put the issue of irregular migration on the summit agenda.
This led to Sunak refusing to attend the main press conference which was then cancelled by Spain's prime minister. Sunak and Meloni went on to co-host a meeting on irregular migration in the margins of the EPC summit which produced an eight-point plan also supported by Albania, France, the Netherlands and the European Commission. President Macron is reported as saying that all EPC countries would be invited to seek agreement on irregular migration at the 2024 summit. The Turkey factor As well as promoting general cooperation between its members, the EPC was designed to create partnerships between the EU on the one hand and Turkey and the UK on the other. Both are important to the EU from the point of view of defense and foreign policy, with Turkey providing the greater challenge. Turkey boasts an inadequate democracy and a poor human rights record, has dragged its feet over agreeing to Swedish NATO membership, and you describe Hamas as freedom fighters rather than terrorists. Yet these divergences from the ideals of the European mainstream are divergences from the NATO mainstream too, and few doubt that Turkey is better inside the tent than outside it. The EPC may face a choice of offering Turkey some sort of specific role to keep it interested, or seeing more absences from summits.
Leaders of more than 40 countries have attended EPC summits so far, along with Presidents of the European Council, the European Commission, and the European Parliament, and the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. The summits to date have allowed President Zelensky of Ukraine to meet European leaders and seek their support in resisting Russian aggression, and they in turn have pledged that support. This has provided a unifying theme which has helped hold the EPC together. Summits have also provided the 10 countries seeking EU membership with opportunities to meet the leaders of EU countries USA Phone Number and to network with them. A summit marred by absences and a row over the agenda Granada was the summit where expected talks on the Armenia/Azerbaijan conflict – following on from meetings on the margins of the first two summits – failed to materialize. The President of Azerbaijan did not attend the Granada summit, nor did his ally President Erdoğan of Turkey, who had “caught a cold”. This was the second EPC summit missed by Erdoğan. In the run-up to the Granada summit, Rishi Sunak and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni were reported to be angry that host country Spain had refused to put the issue of irregular migration on the summit agenda.
This led to Sunak refusing to attend the main press conference which was then cancelled by Spain's prime minister. Sunak and Meloni went on to co-host a meeting on irregular migration in the margins of the EPC summit which produced an eight-point plan also supported by Albania, France, the Netherlands and the European Commission. President Macron is reported as saying that all EPC countries would be invited to seek agreement on irregular migration at the 2024 summit. The Turkey factor As well as promoting general cooperation between its members, the EPC was designed to create partnerships between the EU on the one hand and Turkey and the UK on the other. Both are important to the EU from the point of view of defense and foreign policy, with Turkey providing the greater challenge. Turkey boasts an inadequate democracy and a poor human rights record, has dragged its feet over agreeing to Swedish NATO membership, and you describe Hamas as freedom fighters rather than terrorists. Yet these divergences from the ideals of the European mainstream are divergences from the NATO mainstream too, and few doubt that Turkey is better inside the tent than outside it. The EPC may face a choice of offering Turkey some sort of specific role to keep it interested, or seeing more absences from summits.