German Chancellor Angela Merkel made a proposal to resume meetings with the Russian president. Russia — EU summits have not been held since January 2014
Angela Merkel
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has offered to arrange a meeting of Russian President Vladimir Putin with the leaders of the European Union, the Financial Times newspaper reports, citing diplomatic sources. According to the publication, this initiative was supported by French President Emmanuel Macron.
According to the FT’s interlocutors, the German and French ambassadors have already started discussing a possible Russia-EU summit with representatives of other European countries. We are talking about the preparation of new proposals that could somehow change relations with Moscow.
According to Berlin, Putin’s meeting with American President Joe Biden in Geneva is a good reason to revive relations with Russia. At the same time, France and Germany insist that the EU has common points of contact with Moscow. Among them are the climate, the situation in the Arctic region, cross-border cooperation, healthcare, space exploration, the fight against terrorism, relations with Syria and Iran.
FT at the same time noted the fact that on the eve of Merkel called Putin in connection with the 80th anniversary of the attack of Nazi Germany on the USSR. “Angela Merkel expressed a sense of empathy in connection with the incalculable troubles and suffering that the war unleashed by the Nazi regime brought. Both sides stressed the importance of preserving the historical memory of the tragic events of those years, ” the Kremlin commented on this call.
According to the British edition, the Franco-German initiative was a surprise for a number of EU countries. According to one of the diplomats, some members of the Union directly indicated that it was not worth doing so. Another FT source said that the European Union is now analyzing Merkel’s proposal.
Russia— EU summits have been held regularly since 1995, either in various Russian cities or in Europe. They discussed issues of respect for human rights in Russia, Moscow’s interference in the affairs of the former Soviet republics, infringement of the rights of the Russian-speaking population in the Baltic countries, the possible introduction of a mutual visa-free regime for tourist trips. The last such summit was held in January 2014 in Brussels. With the annexation of Crimea to Russia and the introduction of sanctions, bilateral summits were frozen.