The European Union still needs to find a format for dialogue with Russia — if not with the participation of Vladimir Putin, then without him, the German Chancellor believes
Angela Merkel
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that after the refusal of the EU Council to hold talks with Russian leader Vladimir Putin, the European Union can switch to a format of negotiations “without leaders”, reports Bloomberg.
Merkel made a proposal earlier to hold a meeting of Russia & mdash; EU with the participation of Vladimir Putin, later he was supported by French President Emmanuel Macron. But about ten leaders of the EU countries did not approve of this initiative, including representatives of Latvia, Romania and Estonia. Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said that he would refuse to participate in the meeting if the proposal was supported.
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“I would like to take a bolder step. The formats and conditions of negotiations with Russia will be developed. But not at the level of leaders, ” Merkel told reporters after the summit in Brussels. She explained her proposal by saying that after the meeting of Biden and Putin in Geneva, the European Union should also establish a dialogue with Russia at the highest level. “It’s not enough for American President Joe Biden to talk to the president of Russia. I very much welcome this, but the European Union should also establish a format for negotiations, ” she explained.
Bloomberg assesses the refusal of the EU authorities to support the proposal to meet with Putin as “a rare public defeat for [Merkel] at her last EU summit as chancellor”. Angela Merkel is soon completing her last term as head of the German government. The agency notes that the EU has not held high-level talks with the Russian president since the annexation of Crimea.
Following the results of the EU summit, the leaders of European countries, although they refused to meet with Vladimir Putin, still agreed to “study the formats and conditions of dialogue with Russia”. According to Bloomberg, the European Union can compromise: the president of the European Council, Charles Michel, can hold personal talks with Putin together with Ursula von der Leyen, the head of the European Commission.
The press secretary of the Russian president Dmitry Peskov, commenting on the decision of the EU leaders to abandon the summit directly with the participation of Vladimir Putin, said that the Kremlin took this step with regret. “You know that President Putin was and remains interested in establishing working relations between Moscow and Brussels,” Peskov explained.
Russia— EU summits have been held since 1995. After the annexation of Crimea to Russia in 2014 and the subsequent sanctions, this communication channel was frozen.