European nations are seeking an envoy to represent them in talks on ending the Russia-Ukraine war, concerned that a US-backed process will leave them sidelined and Kyiv vulnerable as Moscow and Washington decide the fate of a conflict that has roiled the continent.
Whether Europe should be represented by one person or a team — and who should take on the role — is being debated Friday as leaders from the 27-nation European Union meet at a summit in Dublin. Senior EU officials and politicians have been suggested, but there is not yet a consensus.
What the job might entail is also unclear and contested. But there is broad agreement by governments from the UK to Ukraine on the need for Europe to join the ongoing negotiations involving Moscow, Kyiv and Washington.
“This needs to be resolved," Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin said as he arrived at the summit, which will include talks on AI as well as the Russia-Ukraine war.
“I would hope that today’s discussions bring clarity around this,” he said. "It needs to be, in my view, finally decided upon within the next week or two.”
Ukraine is eager for support from its European allies, as it's reluctant to leave the talks solely in the hands of a US administration that has often seemed to lean toward Moscow’s views. Russia does not want European countries involved in direct negotiations, complaining they are financing and supplying Ukraine’s military effort.
European leaders also distrust US President Donald Trump to negotiate on their behalf after a series of tense standoffs over trade, Greenland and conflicts in Iran and Ukraine.
“Without Europeans, there is no support for Ukraine,” French President Emmanuel Macron said at a meeting of the European Political Community in Dublin on Thursday. “There is no more US support."
“At the end of the day, we will be the ones to define and decide for our future security as Europeans,” he said.
Europe is broadly aligned but not unified
European leaders fear Russian President Vladimir Putin will press Trump to back a peace settlement that weakens not just Ukraine but broader European security. Putin has demanded NATO troops be pulled back from Russia’s borders and that no European forces be deployed in Ukraine.
British Prime Minister Andy Burnham rejected the idea that Europe was being sidelined during peace negotiations, saying European countries were determined to “put a bit of a ring of steel around Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.”
As envoys from Washington, Moscow and Kyiv met in Abu Dhabi, several European countries, including the UK, France and Germany, attended discussions nearby.
US envoy Jared Kushner and Zelenskyy said after they met in Dublin late Thursday that Europe would be part of the next round of talks. Zelenskyy said Europe would send a negotiating team, adding, "They will have a voice.”
“We cannot conclude this deal without the Europeans being at the table,” Kushner said. He said Putin "is willing to give it a try.”
Supporters of a single envoy, like Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, argue that the absence of a united European voice has allowed individual countries or small groups to engage in freelance diplomacy.
“There are too many different groupings discussing the issue,” she said.
Meloni has criticized a series of seemingly uncoordinated initiatives, including a call to Putin by Finnish President Alexander Stubb and Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre, that she said could undermine European interests.
She has increasingly pushed for a common EU representative for Europe to speak with “a single, authoritative voice” and requested a decision by Friday in Dublin to be formalized in December in coordination with non-EU partners in Europe like Britain and Norway.
Martin said that European representation at the negotiations “can't just be European Union” because the Coalition of the Willing — a group of over two dozen countries that have pledged military support to help maintain a future peace in Ukraine — “has involved far more than the European Union.”
“It's a European continentwide issue,” he said.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov argued that for Europe to join peace talks, it first must name a representative. “The Europeans squabble like spiders in a jar. If someone takes the initiative to establish contact with the Russian side, those people face ostracism.”
An old question with no clear answer
The question of who represents Europe is an old one. Europe itself is loosely defined. Is it the 27-nation EU, the 32-nation NATO military alliance made up mostly of European countries, the 29-nation Schengen zone, or the 47-nation European Political Community?
That has frustrated Washington in the past and present.
After this week's US-brokered talks between Ukraine and Russia in the United Arab Emirates, Kushner said that “if Europe could identify one person to speak on their behalf, that would be a bigger achievement than getting the Russians to include them in the negotiation.”
That echoes the famous question often mis-attributed to former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger: “Who do I call if I want to call Europe?”
Potential candidates from within the EU France, Germany and the UK, the region’s top three economies collectively known as the European trio or E3, have so far been the most engaged European body in negotiations. But while London is deeply involved with Ukraine, the UK left the EU in 2020.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Thursday that the E3 is “a proven format” for diplomacy.
But an E3 envoy would leave out the other 25 EU nations and rankle smaller nations like those that border Russia and Belarus on the bloc’s “eastern flank,” which face constant hybrid threats, including influence campaigns and disruptive drones.
Some back a top EU official for the job. Even inside Brussels, however, there are two leading contenders: European Council President Antonio Costa and EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas.
Costa's current role is to represent national leaders. A former prime minister of Portugal, he spent much of the past year visiting capitals across the bloc.
“European security cannot be discussed without a European voice at the table,” Costa said in Dublin on Thursday. “That European voice needs to be a team effort between European nations, the European Union and NATO.”
But earlier this year, Costa faced criticism within the EU after his office set up a hush-hush back-channel with Moscow.
Kallas, a former prime minister of Estonia, could also lay claim to the envoy role.
She said in Dublin that the E3 represents the “big countries” but then asked “who is representing the European Union?"
"Americans are representing American interests. Europeans are representing European interests,” Kallas said, adding that the EU’s foundational treaties are “very, very clear” that she and Costa were appointed in 2024 to represent the bloc in “security matters.”
Kallas, however, has had a bumpy track record with US diplomats as Washington and Brussels sparred over trade and Ukraine. She's also acknowledged tensions between her office, the EU's External Action Service, and the European Commission.
Another name that has been floated is Stubb, the Finnish president. He has warm relations with Trump and met in Oslo with US envoys Steve Witkoff and Kushner in October. A week after that, he called Putin with Støre, the Norwegian prime minister. Stubb spoke with Zelenskyy by phone on Tuesday.
But some leaders deeply distrust the US-brokered talks. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk was critical of the negotiations, reflecting a regional pessimism among EU countries formerly dominated by the Soviet Union.
“In my opinion, calling them negotiations is an exaggeration," Tusk said Thursday. “We will not build a new security architecture simply because the Russian president, or someone in the United States, wishes it."
