EU leaders talk it out in Dublin – but leave the big calls for another day

A lot of talking done, plenty left to discuss. A couple of big questions were still unanswered when Europe’s leaders wrapped up two days of talks in Dublin on Friday.

Who should represent Europe in negotiations to end the Ukraine war? How will the EU come up with at least €45 billion that Ukraine desperately needs next year to continue to hold the line against Russia’s attacks?

Nobody expected to see proverbial white smoke rising from the Convention Centre Dublin on either point this week.

Sometimes when observing the internal machinations of the European political machine, it can be easier to count the number of consecutive summits required to take a tough decision, rather than how many decisions were taken at an EU summit.

The meeting of the union’s heads of governments on Friday was what’s known as an “informal” European Council. The idea is to have a free-flowing policy debate, where leaders aren’t bound to produce a communique at the end, detailing positions they’ve reached a consensus on.

The “informal” chats between leaders help nudge the conversation along and lay the ground for important compromises down the line.

“It needs to be, in my view, finally decided upon within the next week or two,” Taoiseach Micheál Martin said when asked about appointing a single EU nominee, or representative, to take part in high-level talks on ending the war in Ukraine.

The Europeans look as though they will have a seat at the negotiating table for the first time. That’s progress.

Their inclusion in the next round of talks involving Russia, Ukraine and the United States was the message that Donald Trump’s “peace envoys” Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff passed to Volodymyr Zelenskiy at Baldonnel airbase in Dublin, after coming from a meeting with Vladimir Putin in Moscow.

Trump’s double act gave the same commitment to senior officials from Europe’s big powers at a separate meeting in Baldonnel.

France, Germany, the UK, Italy and Poland had people in the room. European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen’s top adviser, Bjoern Seibert, joined as well.

Those European countries – known as the E5 – want to be directly involved in the negotiations, and so do the EU institutions.

This will be Europe’s negotiating “team” for the time being.

Longer-term, six people can’t fit on one seat – hence the debate about Europe nominating an envoy.

Settling that question probably only matters in the event there is genuine momentum towards a peace settlement. The chances of that appear pretty slim.

A more urgent decision will have to be taken by EU leaders concerning financial support for Ukraine. Kyiv is short at least €70 billion next year – two-thirds of which the EU will be asked to cover.

There is a growing sense the EU will agree to collectively borrow the money as a bloc. That’s what leaders did last December to finance a €90 billion loan for Ukraine. What’s another €45 billion among friends?

Raising the money by dipping into a massive pile of sanctioned Russian central bank cash “frozen” in European financial institutions is another option, though certainly one that’s legally fraught.

To do nothing risks Ukraine’s front lines collapsing. That would be unthinkable for most European governments.

EU leaders will want to settle the financing problem over the course of two European Council summits in Brussels between now and the end of this year.

The leaders are separately trying to wrangle mammoth negotiations about the size of the union’s next seven-year budget to a conclusion as well.

There will be plenty more talking to do before all that is settled.