Cameron meets EU leaders for first time since election
I’m in Riga for the Eastern Partnership summit. We Brits are naturally interested in David Cameron’s first post-election chats with other EU leaders since he won a mandate for renegotiation. Number 10 says there will be walk and talk conversations at most on the British demands, though I’d have thought it would be polite to stop walking and talk standing still if we’re in the business of making friends.
There has clearly been some work done behind the scenes already as German Finance Minister Schauble hints in the Wall Street Journal (there is talk of post-dated treaty changes – I mentioned in yesterday’s blog on lessons from 1975 what some Tories think of that). And Bruno Waterfield at The Times has a scoop on how officials have been working on a first stab at how Britain carves out a separate identity from those EU countries committed to the Euro. That appears to put David Cameron closer to his ultimate objective – the “looser” relationship he’s promised.
But the focus here (there’s an EU leaders gathering next month when the UK will be on he agenda) is former Soviet republics and their relationships with the EU. The last time this grouping met – the EU plus leaders from Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, Georgia, Belarus and Azerbaijan – in 2013 it triggered the demonstrations in Kiev that kicked off Ukraine’s internal conflict. So, it is not without dark potential.
Whatever it was that the EU envisaged offering the former Soviet republics when these meetings were set up seven years ago, that offer has shrunk. It’s done so in reaction to President Putin menacing the countries in what he regards as a region of “privileged interests” for Russia. Russian military hardware is menacing the Lativian Coast even as the talks get under way.
That pithy wordsmith Carl Bildt said at the last of these meetings: “Putin makes you an offer you can’t refuse. The EU makes you an offer you can’t understand.”
Foreign Office sources talk of how they desperately don’t want EU members in the Baltic States or others here to use the occasion to provoke President Putin. By his own very low standards, he is not behaving as badly as he is prone to right now. The Foreign Office sees the potential for helpful Russian action in Syria in the short-term, maybe shifting its support to a new post-Assad government (though no doubt riddled with old regime figures). That could then see a concerted, western-backed move against the Islamic State group in Syria.
But it will be tough keeping everyone on-message at a time of threat.
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