EU leaders reach Dublin still split on who speaks for Europe on Ukraine

EU leaders meet in Dublin on Friday still divided over who should represent the bloc in talks on Ukraine's future, a quarrel that now threatens to overshadow a summit that was not supposed to be about Ukraine at all.

The split follows a day of intense diplomacy. Donald Trump's envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner met Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Thursday, then flew to Dublin to brief Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who had met with about 50 EU and non-EU leaders in the Irish capital. The shuttle came after two days of Russia-Ukraine-U.S. negotiations in Abu Dhabi that largely left the EU out.

Zelenskyy warned that Russia was seeking to reshape Europe's security architecture and insisted that European governments must have a voice in the negotiations. Russia's full-scale invasion started in February 2022.

Diplomats and officials describe at least three camps. European Council President António Costa, whose role gives him a mandate to represent the bloc's leaders, is emerging as the most broadly acceptable candidate. Estonian Prime Minister Kristen Michal was the first leader to back him, saying his "mandate comes directly from the [European] Council" and makes him "accountable" to member states. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who called for the issue to be added to Friday's agenda, said she would be OK with Costa; the leaders of Luxembourg and Poland also backed him.

France and Germany are reluctant to hand over their own seats. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz called the participation of the E3 countries "a well-established format" and said five representatives — from Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Italy and Poland — were already working on the task. "I see absolutely no problem with keeping it that way," he said. French MEP Fabrice Leggeri of National Rally said he could "hardly imagine" Costa or Kallas speaking for Paris, citing France's permanent UN Security Council seat and its nuclear arsenal.

Kaja Kallas, the bloc's top diplomat, is the most divisive option. "That's a joke, right?" one European diplomat said of the prospect, describing her as "probably the worst person you could pick." A second senior European diplomat took the opposite view: "That's what Putin would do. He would pick whoever you don't want to talk to." Michal argued that Kallas's role makes her a natural second to Costa, with both in their positions until 2029. "Putin doesn't have to like it," he added.

Michal said the E3 grouping would always exist, but that decisions affecting the whole continent required "consensual politics." "This is what the European Union is," he said.