PRAGUE (Reuters) – Leaders of the European Union and 17 neighboring countries, from the United Kingdom to Turkey, gathered in Prague on Thursday to discuss security and the energy crisis, a symbolic summit intended to underline the isolation of Russia since the invasion of Ukraine.
“This meeting is an attempt to find a new order without Russia. It doesn’t mean that we want to exclude Russia forever, but this Russia, Putin’s Russia, has no place,” the doorman said. word of European diplomacy, Josep Borrell, as a prelude to this inaugural meeting of a “European political community” whose Emmanuel Macron had launched the idea in May before the Parliament of Strasbourg.
“The signal we want to send is that, unfortunately, we cannot build a security order with Russia. Russia is isolated. You don’t have a seat, everyone else is here,” added the high representative of the European Union (EU) for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy.
The only absence from this forum organized within the grounds of Prague Castle was Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, held back by a political crisis in Copenhagen.
Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelensky addressed the participants via video link, urging them to transform this new organization into a “European community of peace”.
“Let today be a starting point. The point from which Europe and all the free world will act to secure peace for all of us,” he said.
British Prime Minister Liz Truss hailed “a determined show of solidarity with Ukraine and in favor of the principles of freedom and democracy”.
Liz Truss also met one-on-one with Emmanuel Macron and the two leaders agreed to organize a Franco-British summit next year in France “to advance a renewed bilateral agenda”, in terms of energy and immigration in particular.
The visit of the British Prime Minister to Prague was considered encouraging by an EU official, who observed that the United Kingdom, which left the Community bloc in 2020, was committed to a number of files such as the security, immigration and support for Ukraine.
The war in Ukraine should remain one of the main topics on the agenda at the next meeting of this still embryonic CPE, probably in Moldova.
Still, it is still difficult to predict the future of this forum with its vague objective bringing together countries that have little in common.
(Report Jason Hovet, Jan Lopatka, Michel Rose, Sabine Siebold and Robert Muller, French version Lina Golovnya and Jean-Stéphane Brosse)