PARIS — Vegetarian sushi and rugby brought the leaders of Britain and France together after years of Brexit rows.
U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday held the two countries’ first bilateral summit in five years, amid warm words and wishes for closer post-Brexit cooperation.
“This is an exceptional summit, a moment of reunion and reconnection, that illustrates that we want to better speak to each other,” Macron told a joint press conference afterward. “We have the will to work together in a Europe that has new responsibilities.”
Most notably from London’s perspective, the pair agreed a new multi-annual financial framework to jointly tackle the arrival of undocumented migrants on small boats through the English Channel — in part funding a new detention center in France.
“The U.K. and France share a special bond and a special responsibility,” Sunak said. “When the security of our Continent is threatened, we will always be at the forefront of its defense.”
Macron congratulated Sunak for agreeing the Windsor Framework with the European Commission, putting an end to a long U.K.-EU row over post-Brexit trade rules in Northern Ireland, and stressing it marks a “new beginning of working more closely with the EU.”
“I feel very fortunate to be serving alongside you and incredibly excited about the future we can build together. Merci mon ami,” Sunak said.
It has been many years since the leaders of Britain and France were so publicly at ease with each other.
Sunak and Macron bonded over rugby, ahead of Saturday’s match between England and France, and exchanged T-shirts signed by their respective teams.
Later, they met alone at the Élysée Palace for more than an hour, only being joined by their chiefs of staff at the very end of the meeting, described as “warm and productive” by Sunak’s official spokesman. The pair, who spoke English, had planned to hold a shorter one-to-one session, but they decided to extend it, the spokesman said.
They later met with their respective ministers for a lunch comprising vegetarian sushi, turbot, artichokes and praline tart.
Macron congratulated Sunak for agreeing the Windsor Framework with the European Commission | Christophe Archambault/AFP via Getty Images
Speaking on the Eurostar en route to Paris, Sunak told reporters this was the beginning of a “new chapter” in the Franco-British relationship.
“It’s been great to get to know Emmanuel over the last two months. There’s a shared desire to strengthen the relationship,” he said. “I really believe that the range of things that we can do together is quite significant.”
In a show of goodwill from the French, who pushed energetically for a hard line during Brexit talks, Macron said he wanted to “fix the consequences of Brexit” and opened the door to closer cooperation with the Brits in the future.
“It’s my wish and it’s in our interests to have closest possible alliance. It will depend on our commitment and willingness but I am sure we will do it,” he said alongside Sunak.
Tackling small boats
Under the terms of the new migration deal, Britain will pay €141 million to France in 2023-24, €191 million in 2024-25 and €209 million in 2025-26.
This money will come in installments and go toward funding a new detention center in France, a new Franco-British command centre, an extra 500 law enforcement officers on French beaches and better technology to patrol them, including more drones and surveillance aircraft.
The new detention center, located in the Dunkirk area, would be funded by the British and run by the French and help compensate for the lack of space in other detention centers in northern France, according to one of Macron’s aides.
According to U.K. and French officials, France is expected to contribute significantly more funding — up to five times the amount the British are contributing — toward the plan although the Elysée has refused to give exact figures.
A new, permanent French mobile policing unit will join the efforts to tackle small boats. This work will be overseen by a new zonal coordination center, where U.K. liaison officers will be permanently based working with French counterparts.
Sunak stressed U.K.-French cooperation on small boats since November has made a significant difference, and defended the decision to hand more British money to France to help patrol the French northern shores. Irregular migration, he stressed, is a “joint problem.”
Ukraine unity
Sunak and Macron also made a show of unity on the war in Ukraine, agreeing that their priority would be to continue to support the country in its war against Russian aggression.
The French president said the “ambition short-term is to help Ukraine to resist and to build counter-offensives.”
“The priority is military,” he said. “We want a lasting peace, when Ukraine wants it and in the conditions that it wants and our will is to put it in position to do so.”
The West’s top priority should remain helping Ukrainians achieve “a decisive battlefield advantage” that later allows Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to sit down at the negotiating table with Russian President Vladimir Putin from a stronger position, Sunak said en route to the summit.
“That should be everyone’s focus,” he added. “Of course, this will end as all conflicts do, at the negotiating table. But that’s a decision for Ukraine to make. And what we need to do is put them in the best possible place to have those talks at an appropriate moment that makes sense for them.”
The two leaders also announced they would start joint training operations of Ukrainian marines.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
“I woke at 5 o’clock,” the Estonian prime minister recalled recently. The phone was ringing. Her Lithuanian counterpart was on the line.
“Oh my God, it’s really happening,” came the ominous words, according to Kallas. Another call came in. This time it was the Latvian prime minister.
It was February 24, 2022. War had begun on the European continent.
The night before, Kallas had told her Cabinet members to keep their phones on overnight in anticipation of just this moment: Russia was blitzing Ukraine in an attempt to decapitate the government and seize the country. For those in Estonia and its Baltic neighbors, where memories of Soviet occupation linger, the first images of war tapped into a national terror.
“I went to bed hoping that I was not right,” Kallas said.
Across Europe, similar wakeup calls were rolling in. Russian tanks were barreling into Ukraine and missiles were piercing the early morning sky. In recent weeks, POLITICO spoke with prime ministers, high-ranking EU and NATO officials, foreign ministers and diplomats — nearly 20 in total — to reflect on the war’s early days as it reaches its ruinous one-year mark on Friday. All described a similar foreboding that morning, a sense that the world had irrevocably changed.
Within a year, the Russian invasion would profoundly reshape Europe, upending traditional foreign policy presumptions, cleaving it from Russian energy and reawakening long-dormant arguments about extending the EU eastward.
But for those centrally involved in the war’s buildup, the events of February 24 are still seared in their memories.
In an interview with POLITICO, Charles Michel — head of the European Council, the EU body comprising all 27 national leaders — recalled how he received a call directly from Kyiv as the attacks began.
“I was woken up by Zelenskyy,” Michel recounted. It was around 3 a.m. The Ukrainian president told Michel: “The aggression had started and that it was a full-scale invasion.”
Michel hit the phones, speaking to prime ministers across the EU throughout the night.
Ursula von der Leyen and Josep Borrell speak to the press on February 24, 2022 | Kenzo Tribouillard/AFP via Getty Images
By 5 a.m., EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell was in his office. Three hours later, he was standing next to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen as the duo made the EU’s first major public statement about the dawning war. Von der Leyen then convened the 27 commissioners overseeing EU policy for an emergency meeting.
Elsewhere in Brussels, NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg was on the phone with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who were six hours behind in Washington, D.C. He then raced over to NATO headquarters, where he urgently gathered the military alliance’s decision-making body.
The mood that morning, Stoltenberg recalled in a recent conversation with reporters, was “serious” but “measured and well-organized.”
In Ukraine, missiles had begun raining down in Kyiv, Odesa and Mariupol. Volodymyr Zelenskyy took to social media, confirming in a video that war had begun. He urged Ukrainians to stay calm.
These video updates would soon become a regular feature of Zelenskyy’s wartime leadership. But this first one was especially jarring — a message from a president whose life, whose country, was now at risk.
It would be one of the last times the Ukrainian president, dressed in a dove-gray suit jacket and crisp white shirt, appeared in civilian clothes.
Europe’s 21st-century Munich moment
February 24, 2022 is an indelible memory for those who lived through it. For many, however, it felt inevitable.
Five days before the invasion, Zelenskyy traveled to the Munich Security Conference, an annual powwow of defense and security experts frequented by senior politicians.
It was here that the Ukrainian leader made one final, desperate plea for more weapons and more sanctions, hitting out at Germany for promising helmets and chiding NATO countries for not doing enough.
“What are you waiting for?” he implored in the highly charged atmosphere in the Bayerischer Hof hotel. “We don’t need sanctions after bombardment happens, after we have no borders, no economy. Why would we need those sanctions then?”
Five days before the invasion, Zelenskyy traveled to the Munich Security Conference, where he made one final, desperate plea for more weapons and more sanctions | Pool photo by Ronald Wittek/Getty Images
The symbolism was rife — Munich, a city forever associated with appeasement following Neville Chamberlain’s ill-fated attempt to swap land for peace with Adolf Hitler in 1938, was now the setting for Zelenskyy’s last appeal to the West.
Zelenskyy, never missing a moment, seized the historical analogy.
“Has our world completely forgotten the mistakes of the 20th century?” he asked. “Where does appeasement policy usually lead to?”
But his calls for more arms were ignored, even as countries began ordering their citizens to evacuate and airlines began canceling flights in and out of the country.
A few days later, Zelenskyy’s warnings were coming true. On February 22, Vladimir Putin inched closer to war, recognizing the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic and Luhansk People’s Republic in eastern Ukraine. It was a decisive moment for the Russian president, paving the way for his all-out assault less than 48 hours later.
The EU responded the next day — its first major action against Moscow’s activities in Ukraine since the escalation of tensions in 2021. Officials unveiled the first in what would be nine sanction packages against Russia (and counting).
In an equally significant move, a reluctant Germany finally pulled the plug on Nord Stream 2, the yet unopened gas pipeline linking Russia to northern Germany — the decision, made after months of pressure, presaged how the Russian invasion would soon upend the way Europeans powered their lives and heated their homes.
Summit showdown
As it happened, EU leaders were already scheduled to meet in Brussels on February 24, the day the invasion began. Charles Michel had summoned the leaders earlier that week to deal with the escalating crisis, and to sign off on the sanctions.
Throughout the afternoon, Brussels was abuzz — TV cameras from around the world had descended on the European quarter. Helicopters circled above.
Suddenly, the regular European Council meeting of EU leaders, oftena forum for technical document drafting as much as political decision-making, had become hugely consequential. With war unfolding, the world was looking at the EU to respond — and lead.
European leaders gathered in Brussels following the invasion | Pool photo by Olivier Hoslet/AFP via Getty Images
The meeting was scheduled to begin at 8 p.m. As leaders were gathering, news came that Russia had seized the Chernobyl nuclear plant, Moldova had declared a state of emergency and thousands of people were pouring out of Ukraine. Later that night, Zelenskyy announced a general mobilization:every man between the ages of 18 and 60 was being asked to fight.
Many leaders were wearing facemasks, a reminder that another crisis, which now seemed to pale in comparison, was still ever-present.
Just before joining colleagues at the Europa building in Brussels, Emmanuel Macron phoned Putin — the French president’s latest effort to mediate with the Russian leader. Macron had visited Moscow on February 7 but left empty-handed after five hours of discussions. He later said he made the call at Zelenskyy’s request, to ask Putin to stop the war.
“It did not produce any results,” Macron said of the call. “The Russian president has chosen war.”
Arriving at the summit, Latvian Prime Minister Krišjānis Kariņš captured the gravity of the moment. “Europe is experiencing the biggest military invasion since the Second World War,” he said. “Our response has to be united.”
But inside the room, divisions were on full display. How far, leaders wondered, could Europe go in sanctioning Russia, given the potential economic blowback? Countries dug in along fault lines that would become familiar in the succeeding months.
The realities of war soon pierced the academic debates. Zelenskyy’s team had set up a video link as missile strikes encircled the capital city, wanting to get the president talking to his EU counterparts.
One person present in the room recalled the percolating anxiety as the video feed beamed through — the image out of focus, the camera shaky. Then the picture sharpened and Zelenskyy appeared, dressed in a khaki shirt and looking deathly pale. His surroundings were faceless, an unknown room somewhere in Kyiv.
“Everyone was silent, the atmosphere was completely tense,” said the official who requested anonymity to speak freely.
Zelenskyy, shaken and utterly focused, told leaders that they may not see him again — the Kremlin wanted him dead.
“If you, EU leaders and leaders of the free world, do not really help Ukraine today, tomorrow the war will also knock at your door,” he warned, invoking an argument he would return to again and again: that this wasn’t just Ukraine’s war — it was Europe’s war.
Black smoke rises from a military airport in Chuguyev near Kharkiv on February 24, 2022 | Aris Messinis/AFP via Getty Images
Within hours, EU leaders had signed off on their second package of pre-prepared sanctions hitting Russia. But a fractious debate had already begun about what should come next.
The Baltic nations and Poland wanted more — more penalties, more economic punishments. Others were holding back. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi aired their reluctance about expelling Russian banks from the global SWIFT payment system. It was needed to pay for Russian gas, after all.
How quickly that would change.
Sanctions were not the only pressing matter. There was a humanitarian crisis unfolding on Europe’s doorstep. The EU had to both get aid into a war zone and prepare for a mass exodus of people fleeing it.
Janez Lenarčič, the EU’s crisis management commissioner, landed in Paris on the day of the invasion, returning from Niger. Officials started making plans to get ambulances, generators and medicine into Ukraine — ultimately comprising 85,000 tons of aid.
“The most complex, biggest and longest-ever operation” of its kind for the EU, he said.
By that weekend, there was also a plan for the refugees escaping Russian bombs. At a rare Sunday meeting, ministers agreed to welcome and distribute the escaping Ukrainians — a feat that has long eluded the EU for other migrants. Days later, they would grant Ukrainians the instant right to live and work in the EU — another first in an extraordinary time. Decisions that normally took years were now flying through in hours.
Looming over everything were Ukraine’s repeated — and increasingly dire — entreaties for more weapons. Europe’s military investments had lapsed in recent decades, and World War II still cast a dark shadow over countries like Germany, where the idea of sending arms to a warzone still felt verboten.
There were also quiet doubts (not to mention intelligence assessments). Would Ukraine even have its own government next week? Why risk war with Russia if it was days away from toppling Kyiv?
“What we didn’t know at that point was that the Ukrainian resistance would be so successful,” a senior NATO diplomat told POLITICO on condition of anonymity. “We were thinking there would be a change of regime [in Kyiv], what do we do?”
That, too, was all about to change.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz addressed Germany on the night of Russia’s invasion | Pool photo by Hannibal Hanschke/Getty Images
By the weekend, Germany had sloughed off its reluctance, slowly warming to its role as a key military player. The EU, too, dipped its toe into historic waters that weekend, agreeing to help reimburse countries sending weapons to Ukraine — another startling first for a self-proclaimed peace project.
“I remember, saying, ‘OK, now we go for it,’” said Stefano Sannino, secretary-general of the EU’s diplomatic arm.
Ironically, the EU would refund countries using the so-called European Peace Facility — a little-known fund that was suddenly the EU’s main vehicle to support lethal arms going to a warzone.
Over at NATO, the alliance activated its defense plans and sent extra forces to the alliance’s eastern flank. The mission had two tracks, Stoltenberg recounted — “to support Ukraine, but also prevent escalation beyond Ukraine.”
Treading that fine line would become the defining balancing act over the coming year for the Western allies as they blew through one taboo after another.
Who knew what, when
As those dramatic, heady early days fade into history, Europeans are now grappling with what the war means — for their identity, for their sense of security and for the European Union that binds them together.
The invasion has rattled the core tenets underlying the European project, said Ivan Krastev, a prominent political scientist who has long studied Europe’s place in the world.
“For different reasons, many Europeans believed that this is a post-war Continent,” he said.
Post-World War II Europe was built on the assumption that open economic policies, trade between neighbors and mild military power would preserve peace.
“For the Europeans to accept the possibility of the war was basically to accept the limits of our own model,” Krastev argued.
Ukrainian refugees gather and rest upon their arrival at the main railway station in Berlin | Odd Andersen/AFP via Getty Images
The disbelief has bred self-reflection: Has the war permanently changed the EU? Will a generation that had confined memories of World War II and the Cold War to the past view the next conflict differently?
And, perhaps most acutely, did Europe miss the signs?
“The start of that war has changed our lives, that’s for sure,” said Romanian Foreign Minister Bogdan Aurescu. It wasn’t, however, unexpected, he argued. “We are very attentive to what happens in our region,” he said. “The signs were quite clear.”
Aurescu pointed back to April 2021 as the moment he knew: “It was quite clear that Russia was preparing an aggression against Ukraine.”
Not everyone in Europe shared that assessment, though — to the degree that U.S. officials became worried. They started a public and private campaign in 2021 to warn Europe of an imminent invasion as Russia massed its troops on the Ukrainian border.
In November 2021, von der Leyen made her first trip to the White House. She sat down with Joe Biden in the Oval Office, surrounded by a coterie of national security and intelligence officials. Biden had just received a briefing before the gathering on the Russia battalion buildup and wanted to sound the alarm.
“The president was very concerned,” said one European official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive conversations. “This was a time when no one in Europe was paying any attention, even the intelligence services.”
But others disputed the narrative that Europe was unprepared as America sounded the alarm.
“It’s a question of perspective. You can see the same information, but come to a different conclusion,” said one senior EU official involved in discussions in the runup to the war, while conceding that the U.S. and U.K. — both members of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance — did have better information.
Even if those sounding the alarm proved right, said Pierre Vimont, a former secretary-general of the EU’s diplomatic wing and Macron’s Russia envoy until the war broke out, it was hard to know in advance what, exactly, to plan for.
“What type of military operation would it be?” he recalled people debating. A limited operation in the east? A full occupation? A surgical strike on Kyiv?
Here’s where most landed: Russia’s onslaught was horrifying — its brutality staggering. But the signs had been there. Something was going to happen.
“We knew that the invasion is going to happen, and we had shared intelligence,” Stoltenberg stressed. “Of course, until the planes are flying and the battle tanks are rolling, and the soldiers are marching, you can always change your plans. But the more we approached the 24th of February last year, the more obvious it was.”
Then on the day, he recounted, it was a matter of dutifully enacting the plan: “We were prepared, we knew exactly what to do.”
“You may be shocked by this invasion,” he added, “but you cannot be surprised.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
Beijing announced on Saturday that Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, will travel to China on a state visit from February 28 to March 2.
The announcement of the trip comes a day after Beijing, looking to play a role in mediating a resolution to the Russian war on Ukraine, published a 12-point “position paper” aimed at ending the conflict.
“At the invitation of President Xi Jinping, President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko will pay a state visit to China from February 28 to March 2,” the Chinese foreign ministry said in a statement on Saturday.
The Belarusian foreign ministry confirmed the planned visit, saying the Chinese and Belarusian foreign ministers discussed it in a telephone call on Friday.
Lukashenko has backed Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine and allowed its territory to be used in the Russian assault. Lukashenko said last week that his country was prepared to join Russia’s war against Ukraine, if attacked. That prompted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to warn the Belarusian leader not to get directly involved in the war.
Meanwhile, French President Emmanuel Macron on Saturday said he will visit China in early April and seek Beijing’s help in ending the war in Ukraine. “The fact that China is engaging in peace efforts is a good thing,” Macron said, according to French media reports.
Ukraine’s Zelenskyy also said he would like to engage with Beijing following the proposals unveiled on Friday toward resolving the conflict. Zelenskyy said he was open to considering some aspects of the Chinese “position paper” and would welcome the chance to discuss the proposals with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
A meeting with Xi could be “useful” to both countries and for global security, Zelenskyy said.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
French President Emmanuel Macron called on Monday for his country to build “a new, balanced relationship” with Africa, as the former colonial power seeks to reduce its military presence on the continent.
“The objective of this new era is to deploy our security presence in a partnership-based approach,” Macron said in a speech in Paris, ahead of a tour that will take him to Gabon, Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Congo later this week.
In the future, French military bases on the continent will be “co-administered” with local personnel, the French president said, while there will be a “visible decrease” in the number of French troops stationed in Africa over the next few months.
The news comes as France has faced increasing opposition from local governments over its continued military presence in several of its former colonies, and was forced to withdraw hundreds of troops from Mali, the Central African Republic and Burkina Faso over the past year. Around 5,000 French soldiers remain stationed on various bases throughout the continent.
But Paris’ waning influence — particularly in the Sahel region — has also allowed Russia to expand its reach in Africa, including in the digital sphere through the use of disinformation campaigns, as well as on the ground with mercenaries from the Wagner group, who in some cases have replaced French soldiers.
The French president said his country would steer away from “anachronistic” power struggles in Africa, saying African countries should be considered as “partners,” both militarily and economically.
“Africa isn’t [anyone’s] backyard, even less so a continent where Europeans and French should dictate its framework for development,” Macron said.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
LONDON — It was clear when Boris Johnson was forced from Downing Street that British politics had changed forever.
But few could have predicted that less than six months later, all angry talk of a cross-Channel trade war would be a distant memory, with Britain and the EU striking a remarkable compromise deal over post-Brexit trade rules in Northern Ireland.
Private conversations with more than a dozen U.K. and EU officials, politicians and diplomats reveal how the Brexit world changed completely after Johnson’s departure — and how an “unholy trinity” of little-known civil servants, ensconced in a gloomy basement in Brussels, would mastermind a seismic shift in Britain’s relationship with the Continent.
They were aided by an unlikely sequence of political events in Westminster — not least an improbable change of mood under the combative Liz Truss; and then the jaw-dropping rise to power of the ultra-pragmatic Rishi Sunak. Even the amiable figure of U.K. Foreign Secretary James Cleverly would play his part, glad-handing his way around Europe and smoothing over cracks that had grown ever-wider since 2016.
As Sunak’s Conservative MPs pore over the detail of his historic agreement with Brussels — and await the all-important verdict of the Democratic Unionist Party of Northern Ireland — POLITICO has reconstructed the dramatic six-month shift in Britain’s approach that brought us to the brink of the Brexit deal we see today.
Bye-bye Boris
Johnson’s departure from Downing Street, on September 6, triggered an immediate mood shift in London toward the EU — and some much-needed optimism within the bloc about future cross-Channel relations.
For key figures in EU capitals, Johnson would always be the untrustworthy figure who signed the protocol agreement only to disown it months afterward.
In Paris, relations were especially poisonous, amid reports of Johnson calling the French “turds”; endless spats with the Elysée over post-Brexit fishing rights, sausages and cross-Channel migrants; and Britain’s role in the AUKUS security partnership, which meant the loss of a multi-billion submarine contract for France. Paris’ willingness to engage with Johnson was limited in the extreme.
Truss, despite her own verbal spats with French President Emmanuel Macron — and her famously direct approach to diplomacy — was viewed in a different light. Her success at building close rapport with negotiating partners had worked for her as trade secretary, and once she became prime minister, she wanted to move beyond bilateral squabbles and focus on global challenges, including migration, energy and the war in Ukraine.
“Boris had become ‘Mr. Brexit,’” one former U.K. government adviser said. “He was the one the EU associated with the protocol, and obviously [Truss] didn’t come with the same baggage. She had covered the brief, but she didn’t have the same history. As prime minister, Liz wanted to use her personal relationships to move things on — but that wasn’t the same as a shift in the underlying substance.”
Indeed, Truss was still clear on the need to pass the controversial Northern Ireland Protocol Bill, which would have given U.K. ministers powers to overrule part of the protocol unilaterally, in order to ensure leverage in the talks with the European Commission.
Truss also triggered formal dispute proceedings against Brussels for blocking Britain’s access to the EU’s Horizon Europe research program. And her government maintained Johnson’s refusal to implement checks on goods entering Northern Ireland from Great Britain, causing deep irritation in Brussels.
But despite the noisy backdrop, tentative contact with Brussels quietly resumed in September, with officials on both sides trying to rebuild trust. Truss, however, soon became “very disillusioned by the lack of pragmatism from the EU,” one of her former aides said.
“The negotiations were always about political will, not technical substance — and for whatever reason, the political will to compromise from the Commission was never there when Liz, [ex-negotiator David] Frost, Boris were leading things,” they said.
Former British Prime Minister Liz Truss announces her resignation outside 10 Downing Street in central London on October 20, 2022 | Daniel Leal/AFP via Getty Images
Truss, of course, would not be leading things for long. An extraordinary meltdown of the financial markets precipitated her own resignation in late October, after just six weeks in office. Political instability in Westminster once again threatened to derail progress.
But Sunak’s arrival in No. 10 Downing Street — amid warnings of a looming U.K. recession — gave new impetus to the talks. An EU official said the mood music improved further, and that discussions with London became “much more constructive” as a result.
David Lidington, a former deputy to ex-PM Theresa May who played a key role in previous Brexit negotiations, describes Sunak as a “globalist” rather than an “ultra-nationalist,” who believes Britain ought to have “a sensible, friendly and grown-up relationship” with Brussels outside the EU.
During his time as chancellor, Sunak was seen as a moderating influence on his fellow Brexiteer Cabinet colleagues, several of whom seemed happy to rush gung-ho toward a trade war with the EU.
“Rishi has always thought of the protocol row as a nuisance, an issue he wanted to get dealt with,” the former government adviser first quoted said.
One British officialsuggested the new prime minister’s reputation for pragmatism gave the U.K. negotiating team “an opportunity to start again.”
Sunak’s slow decision-making and painstaking attention to detail — the subject of much criticism in Whitehall — proved useful in calming EU jitters about the new regime, they added.
“When he came in, it wasn’t just the calming down of the markets. It was everyone across Europe and in the U.S. thinking ‘OK, they’re done going through their crazy stage,’” the same officialsaid. “It’s the time he takes with everything, the general steadiness.”
EU leaders “have watched him closely, they listened to what he said, and they have been prepared to trust him and see how things go,” Lidington noted.
Global backdrop
As months of chaos gave way to calm in London, the West was undergoing a seismic reorganization.
Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine triggered a flurry of coordinated work for EU and U.K. diplomats — including sanctions, military aid, reconstruction talks and anti-inflation packages. A sense began to emerge that it was in both sides’ common interest to get the Northern Ireland protocol row out of the way.
“The war in Ukraine has completely changed the context over the last year,” an EU diplomat said.
A second U.K. official agreed. “Suddenly we realized that the 2 percent of the EU border we’d been arguing about was nothing compared to the massive border on the other side of the EU, which Putin was threatening,” they said. “And suddenly there wasn’t any electoral benefit to keeping this row over Brexit going — either for us or for governments across the EU.”
A quick glance at the electoral calendar made it clear 2023 offered the last opportunity to reach a deal in the near future, with elections looming for both the U.K. and EU parliaments the following year — effectively putting any talks on ice.
“Rishi Sunak would have certainly been advised by his officials that come 2024, the EU is not going to be wanting to take any new significant initiatives,” Lidington said. “And we will be in election mode.”
The upcoming 25th anniversary of the Belfast/Good Friday peace agreement on April 10 heaped further pressure on the U.K. negotiators, amid interest from U.S. President Joe Biden in visiting Europe to mark the occasion.
“The anniversary was definitely playing on people’s minds,” the first U.K. official said.“Does [Sunak] really want to be the prime minister when there’s no government in Northern Ireland on the anniversary of the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement?”
The pressure was ramped up further when Biden specifically raised the protocol in a meeting with Truss at the U.N. General Assembly in New York in late September, after which British officials said they expected the 25th anniversary to act as a “key decision point” on the dispute.
The King and I
Whitehall faced further pressure from another unlikely source — King Charles III, who was immediately planning a state visit to Paris within weeks of ascending the throne in September 2022. Truss had suggested delaying the visit until the protocol row was resolved, according to two European diplomats.
The monarch is now expected to visit Paris and Berlin at the end of March — and although his role is strictly apolitical, few doubt he is taking a keen interest in proceedings. He has raised the protocol in recent conversations with European diplomats, showing a close engagement with the detail.
One former senior diplomat involved in several of the king’s visits said that Charles has long held “a private interest in Ireland, and has wanted to see if there was an appropriately helpful role he could play in improving relations [with the U.K].”
By calling the deal the Windsor framework and presenting it at a press conference in front of Windsor Castle, one of the king’s residences, No. 10 lent Monday’s proceedings an unmistakable royal flavor.
The king also welcomed von der Leyen for tea at the castle following the signing of the deal. A Commission spokesperson insisted their meeting was “separate” from the protocol discussion talks. Tory MPs were skeptical.
Cleverly does it
The British politician tasked with improving relations with Brussels was Foreign Secretary Cleverly, appointed by Truss last September. He immediately began exploring ways to rebuild trust with Commission Vice-President and Brexit point-man Maroš Šefčovič, the second U.K. official cited said.
His first hurdle was a perception in Brussels that the British team had sabotaged previous talks by leaking key details to U.K. newspapers and hardline Tory Brexiteers for domestic political gain. As a result, U.K. officials made a conscious effort to keep negotiations tightly sealed, a No. 10 official said.
“The relationship with Maroš improved massively when we agreed not to carry out a running commentary” on the content of the discussions, the second U.K. official added.
This meant keeping key government ministers out of the loop, including Northern Ireland Minister Steve Baker, an arch-Brexiteer who had been brought back onto the frontbench by Truss.
British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly is welcomed by European Commission Vice-President Maroš Šefčovič ahead of a meeting at the EU headquarters in Brussels on February 17, 2023 | Kenzo Tribouillard/AFP via Getty Images
The first U.K. official said Baker would have “felt the pain,” as he had little to offer his erstwhile backbench colleagues looking for guidance while negotiations progressed, “and that was a choice by No. 10.”
Cleverly and Šefčovič “spent longer than people think just trying to build rapport,” the second U.K. officialsaid, with Cleverly explaining the difficulties the protocol was raising in Northern Ireland and Šefčovič insistent that key economic sectors were in fact benefiting from the arrangement.
Cleverly also worked at the bilateral relationship with German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, while Sunak made efforts to improve ties with French President Emmanuel Macron, Lidington noted.
A British diplomat based in Washington said Cleverly had provided “a breath of fresh air” after the “somewhat stiff” manner of his predecessors, Truss and the abrasive Dominic Raab.
By the Conservative party conference in early October, the general mood among EU diplomats in attendance was one of expectation. And the Birmingham jamboree did not disappoint.
Sorry is the hardest word
Baker, who had once described himself as a “Brexit hard man,” stunned Dublin by formally apologizing to the people of Ireland for his past comments, just days before technical talks between the Commission and the U.K. government were due to resume.
“I caused a great deal of inconvenience and pain and difficulty,” he said. “Some of our actions were not very respectful of Ireland’s legitimate interests. I want to put that right.”
The apology was keenly welcomed in Dublin, where Micheál Martin, the Irish prime minister at the time, called it “honest and very, very helpful.”
Irish diplomats based in the U.K. met Baker and other prominent figures from the European Research Group of Tory Euroskeptics at the party conference, where Baker spoke privately of his “humility” and his “resolve” to address the issues, a senior Irish diplomat said.
“Resolve was the keyword,” the envoy said. “If Steve Baker had the resolve to work for a transformation of relationships between Ireland and the U.K., then we thought — there were tough talks to be had — but a sustainable deal was now a possibility.”
There were other signs of rapprochement. Just a few hours after Baker’s earth-shattering apology, Truss confirmed her attendance at the inaugural meeting in Prague of the European Political Community, a new forum proposed by Macron open to both EU and non-EU countries.
Sunak at the wheel
The momentum snowballed under Sunak, who decided within weeks of becoming PM to halt the passage of the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill in the House of Lords, reiterating Britain’s preference for a negotiated settlement. In exchange, the Commission froze a host of infringement proceedings taking aim at the way the U.K. was handling the protocol. This created space for talks to proceed in a more cordial environment.
An EU-U.K. agreement in early January allowed Brussels to start using a live information system detailing goods moving from Great Britain to Northern Ireland, seen as key to unlocking a wider agreement on physical checks under the protocol.
The U.K. also agreed to conduct winter technical negotiations in Brussels, rather than alternating rounds between the EU capital and London, as was the case when Frost served as Britain’s chief negotiator.
Trust continued to build. Suddenly the Commission was open to U.K. solutions such as the “Stormont brake,” a clause giving the Northern Ireland Assembly power of veto over key protocol machinations, which British officials did not believe Brussels would accept when they first pitched them.
The Stormont brake was discussed “relatively early on,” a third U.K. official said. “Then we spent a huge amount of effort making sure nobody knew about it. It was kept the most secret of secret things.”
Yet a second EU diplomat claimed the ideas in the deal were not groundbreaking and could have been struck “years ago” if Britain had a prime minister with enough political will to solve the dispute. “None of the solutions that have been found now is revolutionary,” they said.
An ally of Johnson described the claim he was a block on progress as “total nonsense.”
The ‘unholy trinity’
Away from the media focus, a group of seasoned U.K. officials began to engage with their EU counterparts in earnest. But there was one (not so) new player in town.
Tim Barrow, a former U.K. permanent representative to the EU armed with a peerless contact book, had been an active figure in rebuilding relations with the bloc since Truss appointed him national security adviser. He acquired a more prominent role in the protocol talks after Sunak dispatched him to Brussels in January 2023, hoping EU figures would see him as “almost one of them,” another adviser to Sunak said.
Ensconced in the EU capital, Barrow and his U.K. team of negotiators took over several meeting rooms in the basement of the U.K. embassy, while staffers were ordered to keep quiet about their presence.
Besides his work on Northern Ireland trade, Barrow began to appear in meetings with EU representatives about other key issues creating friction in the EU-U.K. relationship, including discussions on migration alongside U.K. Home Secretary Suella Braverman.
Barrow “positioned himself very well,” the first EU diplomat quoted above said. “He’s very close to the prime minister — everybody in Brussels and London knows he’s got his ear. He’s very knowledgeable while very political.”
But other British officials insist Barrow’s presence was not central to driving through the deal. “He has been a figure, but not the only figure,” the U.K. adviser quoted above said. “It’s been a lot of people, actually, over quite a period of time.”
When it came to the tough, detailed technical negotiations, the burden fell on the shoulders of Mark Davies — the head of the U.K. taskforce praised for his mastery of the protocol detail — and senior civil servant and former director of the Northern Ireland Office, Brendan Threlfall.
The three formed an “unholy trinity,” as described by the first U.K. official, with each one bringing something to the table.
Davies was “a classic civil servant, an unsung hero,”the official said, while Threlfall “has good connections, good understanding” and “Tim has met all the EU interlocutors over the years.”
Sitting across the table, the EU team was led by Richard Szostak, a Londoner born to Polish parents and a determined Commission official with a great CV and an affinity for martial arts. His connection to von der Leyen was her deputy head of cabinet until recently, Stéphanie Riso, a former member of Brussels’ Brexit negotiating team who developed a reputation for competence on both sides of the debate.
Other senior figures at the U.K. Cabinet Office played key roles, including Cabinet Secretary Simon Case and senior official Sue Gray.
The latter — a legendary Whitehall enforcer who adjudicated over Johnson’s “Partygate” scandal — has a longstanding connection to Northern Ireland, famously taking a career break in the late 1980s to run a pub in Newry, where she has family links. More recently, she spent two years overseeing the finance ministry.
Gray has been spotted in Stormont at crunch points over the past six months as Northern Ireland grapples with the pain of the continued absence of an executive.
Some predict Gray could yet play a further role, in courting the Democratic Unionist Party as the agreement moves forward in the weeks ahead.
For U.K. and EU officials, the agreement struck with Brussels represented months of hard work — but for Sunak and his Cabinet colleagues, the hardest yards may yet lie ahead.
This story was updated to clarify two parts of the sourcing.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
MUNICH — French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday called out Vladimir Putin for telling him last year that the paramilitary Wagner Group had nothing to do with Russia.
“A year ago I spoke to Putin and he assured me Russia had nothing to do with the Wagner Group,” he told an audience at the Munich Security Conference. “I accepted that,” he said.
The Wagner Group has since provided military services supporting Russia’s war effort. It means Moscow “formalized the fact that Wagner was an explicit, direct, diplomatic-military, neo-mafia medium of Russia around the world,” Macron said.
Macron’s speech comes as country leaders and security officials gathered for a three-day event in the Bavarian capital, a conference dominated by the West’s efforts to allign on how to support Kyiv in its conflict with Russia.
The French president said the time isn’t right for dialogue with Russia and called on Western states to “intensify” their backing of a Ukrainian counter-offensive. But he suggested that — when negotiations would end the war on terms acceptable to Kyiv — Europe and Russia should “create an imperfect balance” on the Continent.
“It’s time for a transition,” he said, suggesting Russia and its adversaries will need to agree on a new regional security architecture, calling it an “imperfect balance.”
But he emphasized the time isn’t right for negotiations, noting it’s “too early” to formulate such a Europe-Russia understanding.
The comments reflect Macron’s long-held view that security guarantees for Russia are an “essential” component of any peace talks. Moscow has to be satisfied with how the war ends, or else any deal would be no more than a ceasefire and not a treaty, he argues.
Laura Kayali contributed reporting.
CORRECTION: This article was updated to correctly reflect Macron compared the Wagner group to the mafia.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
MUNICH — China is trying to drive a fresh wedge between Europe and the United States as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine trudges past its one-year mark.
Such was the motif of China’s newly promoted foreign policy chief Wang Yi when he broke the news at the Munich Security Conference on Saturday that President Xi Jinping would soon present a “peace proposal” to resolve what Beijing calls a conflict — not a war — between Moscow and Kyiv. And he pointedly urged his European audience to get on board and shun the Americans.
In a major speech, Wang appealed specifically to the European leaders gathered in the room.
“We need to think calmly, especially our friends in Europe, about what efforts should be made to stop the warfare; what framework should there be to bring lasting peace to Europe; what role should Europe play to manifest its strategic autonomy,” said Wang, who will continue his Europe tour with a stop in Moscow.
In contrast, Wang launched a vociferous attack on “weak” Washington’s “near-hysterical” reaction to Chinese balloons over U.S. airspace, portraying the country as warmongering.
“Some forces might not want to see peace talks to materialize,” he said, widely interpreted as a reference to the U.S. “They don’t care about the life and death of Ukrainians, [nor] the harms on Europe. They might have strategic goals larger than Ukraine itself. This warfare must not continue.”
Yet at the conference, Europe showed no signs of distancing itself from the U.S. nor pulling back on military support for Ukraine. The once-hesitant German Chancellor Olaf Scholz urged Europe to give Ukraine even more modern tanks. And French President Emmanuel Macron shot down the idea of immediate peace talks with the Kremlin.
And, predictably, there was widespread skepticism that China’s idea of “peace” will match that of Europe.
“China has not been able to condemn the invasion,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told a group of reporters. Beijing’s peace plan, he added, “is quite vague.” Peace, the NATO chief emphasized, is only possible if Russia respects Ukraine’s sovereignty.
Europe watches with caution
Wang’s overtures illustrate the delicate dance China has been trying to pull off since the war began.
Keen to ensure Russia is not weakened in the long run, Beijing has offered Vladimir Putin much-needed diplomatic support, while steering clear of any direct military assistance that would attract Western sanctions against its economic and trade relations with the world.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitro Kuleba is expected to hold a bilateral meeting with Wang while in Munich | Johannes Simon/Getty Images
“We will put forward China’s position on the political settlement on the Ukraine crisis, and stay firm on the side of peace and dialogue,” Wang said. “We do not add fuel to the fire, and we are against reaping benefit from this crisis.”
According to Italy’s Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani, who met Wang earlier this week, Xi will make his “peace proposal” on the first anniversary of the war, which is Friday.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitro Kuleba is expected to hold a bilateral meeting with Wang while in Munich. He said he hoped to have a “frank” conversation with the Beijing envoy.
“We believe that compliance with the principle of territorial integrity is China’s fundamental interest in the international arena,” Kuleba told journalists in Munich. “And that commitment to the observance and protection of this principle is a driving force for China, greater than other arguments offered by Ukraine, the United States, or any other country.”
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell is also expected to meet Wang later on Saturday.
Many in Munich were wary of the upcoming Chinese plan.
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock welcomed China’s effort to use its influence to foster peace but told reporters she had “talked intensively” with Wang during a bilateral meeting on Friday about “what a just peace means: not rewarding the attacker, the aggressor, but standing up for international law and for those who have been attacked.”
“A just peace,” she added, “presupposes that the party that has violated territorial integrity — meaning Russia — withdraws its troops from the occupied country.”
One reason for Europe’s concerns is the Chinese peace plan could undermine an effort at the United Nations to rally support for a resolution condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which will be on the U.N.’s General Assembly agenda next week, according to three European officials and diplomats.
Taiwan issue stokes up US-China tension
If China was keen to talk about peace in Ukraine, it’s more reluctant to do so in a case closer to home.
When Wolfgang Ischinger, the veteran German diplomat behind the conference, asked Wang if he could reassure the audience Beijing was not planning an imminent military escalation against Taiwan, the Chinese envoy was non-committal.
Nato Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said “what is happening in Europe today could happen in east Asia tomorrow” | Johannes Simon/Getty Images
“Let me assure the audience that Taiwan is part of Chinese territory. It has never been a country and it will never be a country in the future,” Wang said.
The worry over Taiwan resonated in a speech from NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, who said “what is happening in Europe today could happen in east Asia tomorrow.” Reminding the audience of the painful experience of relying on Russia’s energy supply, he said: “We should not make the same mistakes with China and other authoritarian regimes.”
But China’s most forceful attack was reserved for the U.S. Calling its decision to shoot down Chinese and other balloons “absurd” and “near-hysterical,” Wang said: “It does not show the U.S. is strong; on the contrary, it shows it is weak.
Wang also amplified the message in other bilateral meetings, including one with Pakistani Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari. “U.S. bias and ignorance against China has reached a ridiculous level,” he said. “The U.S. … has to stop this kind of absurd nonsense out of domestic political needs.”
It remains unclear if Wang will hold a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken while in Germany, as has been discussed.
Hans von der Burchard and Lili Bayer reported from Munich, and Stuart Lau reported from Brussels.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
MUNICH, Germany — As the world’s security elite gathers in Munich this week, they’ll be connecting their mobile phones to Chinese telecoms equipment surrounding the venue.
Heads of state, security chiefs, spooks and intelligence officials head to Germany on Friday for their blue-riband annual gathering, the Munich Security Conference. On the event’s VIP list are U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, French President Emmanuel Macron and hundreds more heads of state and government, ministers and foreign dignitaries.
The gathering takes place at the five-star Hotel Bayerischer Hof. From its ice-themed Polar Bar on the hotel’s rooftop, you can overlook the city’s skyline, spotting multiple telecommunications antennas poking between church steeples. Some of these antennas, within 300 meters of the hotel, are equipped with hardware supplied by controversial Chinese telecoms giant Huawei, POLITICO has learnt through visual confirmation, talks with several equipment experts and information from industry insiders with knowledge of the area’s networks.
One mast, on top of the Hotel Bayerischer Hof building itself, is also potentially equipped with Huawei gear, talks with two industry insiders suggested.
The question of whether to allow Chinese 5G suppliers into Western countries in past years became a bone of contention between Berlin on the one hand and Washington and like-minded partners on the other. This week’s gathering also comes as the U.S. continues to call out Germany’s economic reliance on Beijing, with a new report showing the German trade deficit with China exploded in 2022, and amid sky-high tensions between Washington and Beijing over surveillance balloons hovering over the U.S., Canada and elsewhere.
“The dependence on Huawei components in our 5G network continues to pose an incalculable security risk,” said Maximilian Funke-Kaiser, liberal member of the German Bundestag and digital policy speaker for the government party Free Democratic Party (FDP).
“The use of Huawei technology in the mobile network here runs counter to Germany’s security policy goals,” Funke-Kaiser said, calling the vendor’s involvement in German 4G and 5G “a mistake in view of the Chinese company’s closeness to the state.”
Huawei has consistently denied posing a security risk to European countries.
Delving into data
Despite extensive reporting, POLITICO was unable to gather on-the-record confirmation of which vendor’s telecoms equipment was used for which masts. Operators and vendors refused to disclose the information, citing contractual obligations, and local authorities said they didn’t have the information available.
The security risks associated with Huawei equipment also vary, and differ even among close allies in the West. Some capitals argue the real risk of Chinese telecoms equipment is the overreliance on a Chinese firm in an unstable geopolitical situation — much like Europe relied on Russian gas for its energy needs.
But others argue that the risk runs deeper and that China could use Huawei’s access to equipment and data in European mobile networks — especially in areas of critical importance and high sensitivity — to put the West’s security at risk. Huawei has been implicated in a number of high-profile espionage cases, including at the African Union Headquarters.
The Munich Security Conference takes place at the five-star Bayerischer Hof hotel | Ronald Wittek/EPA-EFE
When asked about Huawei’s presence in Munich, Mike Gallagher, a Republican and Chairman of the U.S. House select committee on China, said POLITICO’s findings were “troubling” and “should concern every individual attending the conference.”
The chair of the U.S. Senate intelligence committee, Mark Warner, a Democrat who’s attending the conference, said it was “a timely reminder that we must continue to work with like-minded allies to promote secure and competitively priced alternatives to Huawei equipment.”
U.S. Senate intelligence committee Vice Chair Marco Rubio (Republican, Florida) said U.S. diplomats “should be aware of the risks and take necessary precautions.”
Munich networking
From a 2007 speech by Russia’s Vladimir Putin to U.S. President Joe Biden’s virtual address at the start of his mandate in February 2021, the conference strives to set the global diplomatic and international relations agenda. Its organizers see it as an open space for debating geopolitics and world affairs, with attendees ranging from across the world and an advisory board where Chinese state officials sit alongside Western diplomats and titans of industry.
The conference’s guest list reveals something else too: The gathering is seen as critical by U.S. government officials. This year, the U.S. is sending its largest delegation yet, with Harris flanked by dozens of government officials, security chiefs and congresspeople, including Democrat leader Chuck Schumer, Republican leader Mitch McConnell and others.
For these U.S. attendees — and the Western partners that see eye to eye with the U.S. position on China’s telecoms giant Huawei — the networks around the premises prove troublesome.
An online map on the website of Germany’s telecoms agency, the Bundesnetzagentur, shows 13 locations for masts and antennas surrounding the Hotel Bayerischer Hof. The agency also provides information about which of the country’s three main operators — Deutsche Telekom, Vodafone and Telefónica — use which locations.
POLITICO shared photos of seven masts near the hotel with fourexperts specialized in telecoms radio access network (RAN) equipment. These experts established that at least twowere equipped with gear of Chinese telecoms giant Huawei.
If a network operator has one mast equipped with Huawei in Munich, it likely equips all masts in the area with the same vendor, two industry insiders said. Operators usually use one provider for larger areas. This means at least one other location is also likely equipped with Huawei gear, the insiders said. Three other locations, including the mast on the roof of the conference venue, are used by an operator using Huawei equipment but those locations are part of infrastructure that is shared by several operators, meaning there’s a chance these are equipped with Huawei gear but it’s unconfirmed.
The findings are in line with recent reports on Germany’s telecoms infrastructure.
Europe’s largest economy is a stronghold for Huawei in the West. A report by boutique telecoms intelligence firm Strand Consult estimated that Germany relies on Chinese technology for 59 percent of its ongoing 5G network deployment. The country already had a massive reliance on Chinese equipment in its 4G network, where Strand estimated Huawei accounts for 57 percent.
In February 2021, U.S. President Joe Biden delivered remarks at the virtual event hosted by the Munich Security Conference — Biden stressed the United States’ commitment to NATO after four years of the Trump administration undermining the alliance | Pooled photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
“If you look at the percentage of Chinese equipment in Germany, you could say it is the most unsafe country in Europe,” said John Strand, founder of Strand Consult. “Welcome to the Munich Security Conference: We can’t guarantee your security,” he quipped.
Black hole of telecoms intelligence
Establishing with certainty just how many of the 13 masts are equipped with Chinese telecoms gear is extremely difficult. Both German operators and their vendors have a policy to not communicate what equipment they’re using in which locations, citing contractual obligations on confidentiality.
Deutsche Telekom and Vodafone confirmed that they use Huawei in their German antenna networks. Telefónica said they use “a mix of European and international network suppliers” in Germany. Yet, all declined to comment on whether they use Huawei in Munich.
Ericsson, Nokia and Huawei all declined to comment on whether they were providing gear in the greater Munich area, referring questions to the local operators.
Government regulators, too, divulge no details of which suppliers provide gear for certain locations. The Federal Network Agency and the Federal Office for Information Security admitted they don’t know which equipment is fitted to which mast; both referred to the interior ministry for answers. The interior ministry said it “does not usually know which critical components are installed on which radio mast in detail.”
The Hotel Bayerischer Hof forwarded questions about mobile infrastructure on its roof to the security conference’s organizers.
The Munich Security Conference itself said in a statement: “As a matter of principle, we do not comment on the exact details of the infrastructure used for the main conference in Munich. We are in close contact with all relevant authorities in order to secure the conference venue, the participants and the digital space accordingly.”
The Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) does provide its own security networks for official events, but the Munich Security Conference is “outside the responsibility of the BSI,” the BSI said in an email.
Germany’s telecoms ambiguity
Through its 5G equipment it is feasible for Huawei to spy on users of a network or to disrupt communications as the very design of 5G makes it harder to monitor security, the head of the U.K.’s intelligence service MI6, Alex Younger, said to an audience in his second public speech.
But John Lee, director of the consultancy East-West Futures and an expert on Chinese digital policy, said it’s “not a clear cut technical case” as to whether Huawei equipment in current telecoms networks represents a material security risk.
“Some non-Western countries are proceeding to upgrade their telecoms infrastructure with Huawei as a key partner,” Lee said. “This is still mainly a political issue of how much suspicion is placed on the ambitions of the Chinese state and its relationship with Chinese companies.”
In an effort to coordinate a common approach to vendors, the EU developed “5G security toolbox” guidelines in 2019 and 2020 to mitigate security risks in networks. Some major European countries, including France, have imposed hard restrictions for their operators, including by limiting the use of “high-risk vendors” — a term widely understood across Europe to be Chinese vendors Huawei and ZTE — in certain strategic geographic areas.
In Germany, however, policymakers took years to agree on their framework for 5G security. In April 2021 — more than a year after the EU’s joint plan came out — it passed measures that allowed the government to intervene on operators’ contracts with Chinese vendors.
But those interventions haven’t barred the use of Huawei in certain geographical areas yet.
And the interior ministry — which has veto power to ban or recall certain components if they see them as an “impairment of public order or safety” — hasn’t intervened much either, a ministry spokesperson said via email.
Up till now, the spokesperson said, specific orders to cut Huawei from German networks “have not been issued.”
Alex Ward, Maggie Miller and Tristan Fiedler contributed reporting.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
PARIS — Vladimir Putin is a “radically rational” leader who is betting that Western countries will grow tired of backing Ukraine and agree a negotiated end to the conflict that will be favorable to Russia, former French President François Hollande told POLITICO.
Hollande, who served from 2012 to 2017, has plenty of first-hand experience with Putin. He led negotiations with the Russian leader, along with former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, under the so-called Normandy format in 2014 after Moscow annexed Crimea from Ukraine and supported pro-Russian separatists in the Donbass region.
But those efforts at dialogue proved fruitless, exposing Putin as a leader who only understands strength and casting doubt on all later attempts at talks — including a controversial solo effort led by current French President Emmanuel Macron, Hollande said in an interview at his Paris office.
“He [Putin] is a radically rational person, or a rationally radical person, as you like,” said the former French leader, when asked if Putin could seek to widen the conflict beyond Ukraine. “He’s got his own reasoning and within that framework, he’s ready to use force. He’s only able to understand the [power] dynamic that we’re able to set up against him.”
Ahead of the one-year anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, Hollande added that Putin would seek to “consolidate his gains to stabilize the conflict, hoping that public opinion will get tired and that Europeans will fear escalation in order to bring up at that stage the prospect of a negotiation.”
But unlike when he was in power and Paris and Berlin led talks with Putin, this time the job of mediating is likely to fall to Turkey or China — “which won’t be reassuring for anyone,” Hollande said.
Macron, who served as Hollande’s economy minister before leaving his government and going on to win the presidency in 2017, has tried his own hand at diplomacy with Russia, holding numerous one-on-one calls with Putin both before and after his invasion of Ukraine.
But the outreach didn’t yield any clear results, prompting criticism from Ukraine and Eastern Europeans who also objected to Macron saying that Russia would require “security guarantees” after the war is over.
Hollande stopped short of criticizing his successor over the Putin outreach. It made sense to speak with Putin before the invasion to “deprive him of any arguments or pretexts,” he said. But after a “brief period of uncertainty” following the invasion, “the question [about the utility of dialogue] was unfortunately settled.”
Frustration with France and Germany’s leadership, or lack thereof, during the Ukraine war has bolstered arguments that power in Europe is moving eastward into the hands of countries like Poland, which have been most forthright in supporting Ukraine.
But Hollande wasn’t convinced, arguing that northern and eastern countries are casting in their lot with the United States at their own risk. “These countries, essentially the Baltics, the Scandinavians, are essentially tied to the United States. They see American protection as a shield.”
Former French President François Hollande | Antonio Cotrim/EFE via EPA
“Until today,” he continued, U.S. President Joe Biden has shown “exemplary solidarity and lived up to his role in the transatlantic alliance perfectly. But tomorrow, with a different American president and a more isolationist Congress, or at least less keen on spending, will the United States have the same attitude?”
“We must convince our partners that the European Union is about principles and political values. We should not deviate from them, but the partnership can also offer precious, and solid, security guarantees,” Hollande added.
Throwing shade
Hollande was one of France’s most unpopular presidents while in office, with approval ratings in the low single digits. But he has enjoyed something of a revival since leaving the Elysée and is now the country’s second-most popular politician behind former Prime Minister Edouard Philippe, five spots ahead of Macron — in keeping with the adage that the French prefer their leaders when they are safely out of office.
His time in office was racked with crises. In addition to failed diplomacy over Ukraine, Hollande led France’s response to a series of terrorist attacks, presided over Europe’s sovereign debt crisis with Merkel, and faced massive street protests against labor reforms.
On that last point, Macron is now feeling some of the heat that Hollande felt during the last months of his presidency. More than a million French citizens have joined marches against a planned pension system reform, and further strikes are planned. Hollande criticized the reform plans, which would raise the age of retirement to 64, as poorly planned.
“Did the president choose the right time? Given the succession of crises and with elevated inflation, the French want to be reassured. Did the government propose the right reform? I don’t think so either — it’s seen as unfair and brutal,” said Hollande. “But now that a parliamentary process has been set into motion, the executive will have to strike a compromise or take the risk of going all the way and raising the level of anger.”
A notable difference between him and Macron is the quality of the Franco-German relationship. While Hollande and Merkel took pains to showcase a form of political friendship, the two sides have been plainly at odds under Macron — prompting a carefully-worded warning from the former commander-in-chief.
Former French President Francois Hollande with former German Chancellor Angela Merkel | Thierry Chesnot/Getty images
“In these moments when everything is being redefined, the Franco-German couple is the indispensable core that ensures the EU’s cohesion. But it needs to redefine the contributions of both parties and set new goals — including European defense,” said Hollande.
“It’s not about seeing one another more frequently, or speaking more plainly, but taking the new situation into account because if that work isn’t done, and if that political foundation isn’t secure, and if misunderstandings persist, it’s not just a bilateral disagreement between France and Germany that we’ll have, but a stalled European Union,” he said, adding that he “hoped” a recent Franco-German summit had “cleared up misunderstandings.”
The socialist leader also had some choice words for Macron over the way he’s trying to rally Europeans around a robust response to Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which offers major subsidies to American green industry. Several EU countries have come out against plans, touted by Paris, to create a “Buy European Act” and raise new money to support EU industries.
During a joint press conference on Monday, Macron and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte agreed to disagree on the EU’s response.
“On the IRA, France is discovering that its partners are, for the most part, liberal governments. When you tell the Dutch or the Scandinavians hear about direct aid [for companies], they hear something that goes against not just the spirit, but also the letter of the treaties,” Hollande said.
Another issue rattling European politics lately is the Qatargate corruption scandal, in which current and former MEPs as well as lobbyists are accused of taking cash in exchange for influencing the European Parliament’s work in favor of Qatar and Morocco.
Hollande recalled that his own administration had been hit by a scandal when his budget minister was found to be lying about Swiss bank accounts he’d failed to disclose from tax authorities. The scandal led to Hollande establishing the Haute autorité pour la transparence de la vie publique — an independent authority that audits public officials and has the power to refer any misdeeds to a prosecutor.
Now would be a good time for the EU to follow that example and establish an independent ethics body of its own, Hollande said.
“I think it’s a good institution that would have a role to play in Brussels,” he said. “Some countries will be totally in favor because integrity and transparency are part of their basic values. Others, like Poland and Hungary, will see a challenge to their sovereignty.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal has a tight two-year timetable for securing EU membership that is bound to dominate discussions at this week’s historic EU-Ukraine summit, the first to take place on Ukrainian soil.
The problem? No one within the EU thinks this is realistic.
When EU commissioners travel to Kyiv later this week ahead of Friday’s summit with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the heads of the European Commission and Council, their main task is likely to involve managing expectations.
Shmyhal himself is imposing a tough deadline. “We have a very ambitious plan to join the European Union within the next two years,” he told POLITICO. “So we expect that this year, in 2023, we can already have this pre-entry stage of negotiations,” he said.
This throws down a gauntlet to the EU establishment, which is trying to keep Ukrainian membership as a far more remote concept.
French President Emmanuel Macron said last year it could be “decades” before Ukraine joins. Even EU leaders, who backed granting Ukraine candidate status at their summit last June, privately admit that the prospect of the country actually joining is quite some years away (and may be one reason they backed the idea in the first place.) After all, candidate countries like Serbia, Turkey and Montenegro have been waiting for many years, since 1999 in Ankara’s case.
Ukraine is a conundrum for the EU. Many argue that Brussels has a particular responsibility to Kyiv. It was, after all, Ukrainians’ fury at the decision of President Viktor Yanukovych to pull out of a political and economic association agreement with the EU at Russia’s behest that triggered the Maidan uprising of 2014 and set the stage for war. As European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen put it: Ukraine is “the only country where people got shot because they wrapped themselves in a European flag.”
Ukraine’s close allies in the EU such as Poland and the Baltic countries strongly support Kyiv’s membership push, seeing it as a democracy resisting an aggressor. Many of the EU old guard are far more wary, however, as Ukraine — a global agricultural superpower — could dilute their own powers and perks. Ukraine and Poland — with a combined population of 80 million — could team up to rival Germany as a political force in the European Council and some argue Kyiv would be an excessive drain on the EU budget.
Short-term deliverables
Friday’s summit in Kyiv — the first EU meeting of its kind to take place in an active war zone — will be about striking the right balance.
Though EU national leaders will not be in attendance, European Council officials have been busy liaising with EU member states about the final communiqué.
Some countries are insisting the statement should not stray far from the language used at the June European Council — emphasizing that while the future of Ukraine lies within the European Union, aspirant countries need to meet specific criteria. “Expectation is quite high in Kyiv, but there is a need to fulfill all the conditions that the Commission has set out. It’s a merit-based process,” said one senior EU official.
Ukraine is a conundrum for the EU. Many argue that Brussels has a particular responsibility to Kyiv | Sergei Supinsky/AFP via Getty Images
Still, progress is expected when Zelenskyy meets with von der Leyen and European Council President Charles Michel.
Shmyhal told POLITICO he hopes Ukraine can achieve a “substantial leap forward” on Friday, particularly in specific areas — an agreement on a visa-free regime for industrial goods; the suspension of customs duties on Ukrainian exports for another year; and “active progress” on joining the SEPA (Single Euro Payments Area) payments scheme and the inclusion of Ukraine into the EU’s mobile roaming area.
“We expect progress and acceleration on our path towards signing these agreements,” he said.
Anti-corruption campaign
The hot topic — and one of the central question marks over Ukraine’s EU accession — will be Ukraine’s struggle against corruption. The deputy infrastructure minister was fired and deputy foreign minister stepped down this month over scandals related to war profiteering in public contracts.
“We need a reformed Ukraine,” said one senior EU official centrally involved in preparations for the summit. “We cannot have the same Ukraine as before the war.”
Shmyhal insisted that the Zelenskyy government is taking corruption seriously. “We have a zero-tolerance approach to corruption,” he said, pointing to the “lightning speed” with which officials were removed this month. “Unfortunately, corruption was not born yesterday, but we are certain that we will uproot corruption,” he said, openly saying that it’s key to the country’s EU accession path.
He also said the government was poised to revise its recent legislation on the country’s Constitutional Court to meet the demands of both the European Commission and the Venice Commission, an advisory body of the Council of Europe. Changes could come as early as this week, ahead of the summit, Shmyhal said.
Though Ukraine has announced a reform of the Constitutional Court, particularly on how judges are appointed, the Venice Commission still has concerns about the powers and composition of the advisory group of experts, the body which selects candidates for the court. The goal is to avoid political interference.
Shmyhal said these questions will be addressed. “We are holding consultations with the European Commission to see that all issued conclusions may be incorporated into the text,” he told POLITICO.
Nonetheless, the symbolic power of this week’s summit is expected to send a strong message to Moscow about Ukraine’s European aspirations.
European Council President Michel used his surprise visit to Kyiv this month to reassure Ukraine that EU membership will be a reality for Ukraine, telling the Ukrainian Rada (parliament) that he dreams that one day a Ukrainian will hold his job as president of the European Council.
“Ukraine is the EU and the EU is Ukraine,” he said. “We must spare no effort to turn this promise into reality as fast as we can.”
The key question for Ukrainians after Friday’s meeting will be how fast the rhetoric and promises can become a reality.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
