European Political Community’s UK summit should heed Churchill’s ‘blood, toil, tears and sweat’ warning

As the European Political Community (EPC) gears up to meet this week and discuss the arc of conflict and instability and Europe’s borders, European leaders must heed Winston Churchill’s call to action, write Dylan Macchiarini Crosson and Steven Blockmans.

Dylan Macchiarini Crosson is a researcher and Steven Blockmans a senior associate research fellow at the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS).

While at Blenheim Palace, leaders will be hard-pressed to ignore the echoes of his ‘blood, toil, tears, and sweat’ speech in May 1940.

Facing an existential battle on the continent, freshly-elected UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer will have a baptism of fire at the first major international gathering he’ll host.

Due to the EPC’s origins and aims – namely to show a united front against Russia and provide an informal forum for strategic intimacy amongst leaders of 47 European countries (plus the EU) on an equal footing – the format is a high-stakes gamble in diplomacy.

The previous underwhelming summit in Spain was boycotted by Türkiye’s strongman Recep Erdoğan and his Azeri counterpart Ilham Aliyev, and even the photo-op was mishandled. The UK must get this summit right to keep the EPC on track.

Opportunities

Following the G7, the Peace Conference in Switzerland, the European Council, and the NATO Washington Summit, the EPC summit presents a chance to prolong the international chorus in support of Ukraine.

The new UK leader has the unique opportunity to use the EPC to channel his inner Churchill and deliver the most evocative rebukes of Russia’s unjustified war — and a vision for a peaceful and secure continent.

But the EPC must go beyond support for Ukraine. It must harness the interest of leaders to tackle other strategic issues with a pan-European dimension, subsequently brought forward by relevant ministries and international bodies.

Following past practice, the UK will host three roundtable discussions on boosting energy connectivity, managing migration, and tackling foreign information manipulation and interference (FIMI).

Guiding them will be key questions formulated during three expert meetings co-organised with the Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office, as well as an event with the UK Mission to the EU, that brought key government representatives (sherpas and diplomats) and policy analysts together to gather ideas, opinions and expectation.

This diplomatic process involving non-officials is a welcome innovation for the under-institutionalised EPC and worth replicating by future presidency-holders. It could serve not only as a helpful instrument for preparing for upcoming summits but also as a trait d’union amongst them.

And the appetite to use the EPC to explore avenues for plurilateral cooperation should be tapped even further. Minilaterals on the sidelines could facilitate peace dialogues, discuss people-to-people mobility or exchange lessons learned about emerging and disruptive technologies.

Two examples from previous EPC summits point the way.

One is the UK’s efforts to expand partnerships on trafficking in human beings, with its eight-point plan agreed with Italy, the Netherlands, France, Albania, and the European Commission.

Another is France’s initiative to relaunch energy cooperation with Spain and Portugal, leading to the establishment of the H2MED project for an undersea hydrogen pipeline.

In this context, the addition of the UK to the Weimar Triangle defence cooperation would pack the kind of punch that the Kremlin would take seriously.

Potential pitfalls

Although opportunities abound to transform this informal leaders’ meeting into a leaders’ ideas lab, it will take hard work to shift currently misaligned stars.

Firstly, the UK found it harder to actively craft the message coming out of Blenheim Palace while progress was on pause during the busy election campaign.

And France, which has been leading the EPC from behind since its inception, has also just experienced a snap parliamentary election. These resulted in gains on both the far-right and the far-left, and President Emmanuel Macron’s own party badly wounded.

Will Macron’s vision for continental security and stability be weakened by an uneasy co-habitation with inward-looking parties?

This summit may be the last chance before Hungary, led by Putin’s acolyte Viktor Orbán, takes the wind out of the EPC’s pro-Ukraine sails when they host the next summit this autumn. Any talk about ‘defending and securing democracy’ – the UK’s label for the roundtable on FIMI – is likely to be left by the wayside too.

Finally, since participation partly defines the message of the EPC, President Erdoğan’s third strike of absenteeism would cast a shadow over the UK summit and the pretence of convening all of Europe except a hell-bent Russia and its Belarusian accomplice.

So, what to do?

The EPC’s value is hors question. But its purpose must be actively sought.

In this sense, the Franco-British engine of pan-European cooperation must take ownership of the EPC and set the foundations for its sustainability moving forward.

In the absence of a final communiqué, sherpas and special envoys should coordinate prime ministerial/presidential statements on Ukraine and reinforce pan-European and multilateral cooperation, emphasising the importance of the EPC in this grave hour for Europe.