Dr Cleo Davies (University of Warwick)
The fourth summit of the European Political Community (EPC) was a real success for the UK and for its new prime minister, Keir Starmer. Not only did he use the opportunity to showcase his government’s ambitions to reset the UK’s relations with the EU and Member States, but the summit appears to have restored the UK’s reputation for diplomacy, not least because of how well it was prepared and organised.
As for the EPC itself, in spite of the absence of any joint declaration or roadmap for action, it has become an inked in commitment in the diaries of the heads of states and governments across Europe, with the notable exception of Türkiye’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan who only ever attended the first meeting. The next three summits are set to take place in Hungary, Albania and Denmark.
The Blenheim Summit on 18 July further consolidated some of the key features that explain the organisation’s resilience even though there is lingering scepticism over its prospects for survival amongst some observers.
The EPC in its current form – a very informal biannual summit at the highest political level – has a strong symbolic dimension because it signals a shared stake in the European continent and a willingness to meet even as Putin’s Russia wages war and seeks to disrupt and divide. The first summit in Prague turned into a demonstration of unity in the face of Russian aggression, whilst the second was a strong signal of support for Moldova against Russian hybrid threats. Support for Ukraine was a central theme of the summits in Granada and in Blenheim Palace, with President Volodymyr Zelensky addressing the plenary at the latter. From this perspective, not holding the EPC summit is a much more damaging prospect than the absence of a declaration or roadmap for action at this stage of its existence.
Secondly, despite there being no formal secretariat to support the EPC, there are organisational features that do constitute an institutional basis, albeit a rather weak one. The EPC summit provides a space for bilateral talks between leaders who would not otherwise have the opportunity to meet, as well as for roundtable discussions on topics of strategic interests, unburdened by any formal requirement to agree on common declarations or actions. The Blenheim Summit further institutionalised the EPC as a leader-level, continent-wide political “speed-dating” and brainstorming event. The themes discussed were migration, energy and connectivity, and defending and securing democracy. In what could be a template, the UK organised preparatory seminars with think tanks in the UK and across Europe in the run up to the summit to feed into the roundtable discussions.
The principle of a biannual summit with the chair alternating between an EU member state and a non-EU state is another key organisational feature that was also established at the first summit in Prague in October 2022. Albania will host in the first half of 2025 whilst Denmark, as the country that will hold the rotating presidency of the EU in the fall of 2025, will chair the 7th EPC summit. The fact that the EPC summit meeting is coupled with the formal EU governance calendar has no doubt significantly contributed to the organisation’s survival so far, especially given the absence of any substantive goals underpinning its existence. The costs, resources and efforts required are minimised by combining the EPC summit with the traditional informal summit of EU heads of states and governments organised by the country that holds the rotating presidency of the Council.
Nevertheless, EU Member States, with the exception of France’s President Emmanuel Macron whose idea it was in the first place, have been the most lukewarm about the need for the EPC. This contrasts with the political added value the EPC has so far generated for the non-EU state that has hosted the summit, whether for the UK or Moldova. The next non-EU state to host is Albania, whose prime minister Edi Rama has been an active participant in discussions around migration, a concern that has gradually established itself as a central theme for the EPC and was a major topic of discussion at the Blenheim Summit. In the current geopolitical context, the EU, with its resources and convenor power, would do well to continue to support non-EU states that either don’t have the convenor power or the same opportunities to engage with their counterparts across the continent as EU Member States.
As for the prospect of a summit declaration or clear roadmap for action in future, it remains unlikely. Perhaps the EPC can grow into an informal intergovernmental organisations, in the sense defined by Charles B. Rogers – no formal statutes or secretariat but an intergovernmental organisation that adopts non-legally binding common declarations and/or a roadmap for action, usually enlisting formal international organisations to carry these out. At the Blenheim Summit, the OSCE, NATO and the Council of Europe were invited for the first time. This could pave the way in future EPC summits for announcing ideas or decisions that use the institutional resources of these formal international organisations.
Right now though, everyone must be relieved that the EPC is such an informal affair, because any commitments, in particular on pan-European security and on support for Ukraine, would not have fared well as Viktor Orbán of Hungary prepares to chair the next summit on the 7 November 2024. Even the more symbolic value of the EPC may be at serious risk. Given that EU officials and member state foreign ministers are already boycotting events in Hungary, a cancellation could be on the cards, which may even turn out to be less problematic than the prospect of Orbán using the EPC as a platform for promoting his self-declared ‘peace missions’ with Russia and China.
Dr Cleo Davies, University of Warwick, is Senior Research Fellow on the ESRC funded project ‘Living with the neighbours: the UK, EU and wider Europe’, part of the UK in a Changing Europe Programme..
The views expressed in this blog post are the position of the author and not necessarily those of the Brexit Institute blog.