They came to discuss AI, but EU leaders spent most of their time during a summit in Dublin on Friday grappling with questions about Ukraine — namely who should represent them in future peace talks.

Despite plenty of disagreement about whether it should be a single person (and if so, who) or a collection of them, they managed to strike a deal: Future talks would involve national security officials from Germany, France, the U.K., Italy and Poland — the so-called E5 powers — plus representatives from the European Commission and European Council. A classic European compromise.

“It is essential to have a team and to speak with one voice,” European Council President António Costa said after the summit, noting that Donald Trump had also tasked two envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, with conducting negotiations.

Ireland, which holds the EU’s rotating presidency and hosted the informal gathering, had billed the meeting as a rare chance for a high-level discussion on how to develop artificial intelligence in accordance with European values.

But the question of how to secure peace in Ukraine — and who should negotiate on Europe’s behalf — quickly dominated discussions, as leaders sparred over the format of future peace negotiations and warned about the risks of a potential deal brokered between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Indeed, a meeting next week between the U.S. and Russian leaders has set Europe on edge, prompting warnings about a possible Yalta-type agreement in which superpowers would decide on European security questions over the heads of countries directly concerned, reminiscent of talks toward the end of World War II that divided Europe up between the four allied powers.

“That is why I want to make our message to the U.S. very clear: Please, no surprises!” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said regarding the Trump-Putin meeting, scheduled to take place during an APEC summit in Shenzhen, China, on Nov. 18-19. “Continue to play on Team Europe and on the same team as Ukraine. And let’s work together for genuine peace in Ukraine.”

The question of who should represent Europe in future discussions about Ukraine and the post-conflict security order was added to the summit’s agenda at the last minute, following a request from Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.

Earlier in the day, Merz had voiced preference for a narrower group made up of officials from Berlin, Paris and London, while Kaja Kallas, the EU’s chief diplomat, argued that she was best placed to lead discussions.

“I know that the Russians don’t want me, but do we have a say on who is representing Russia? No, we don’t,” said Kallas.

“We have a really strong team,” she went on. “I’m ready to do this work with foreign ministers.”

AI jockeys with Russia fears

It wasn’t all about Ukraine. Over a lunch of baked salmon fillets and crushed Ballymackenny potatoes, EU leaders grappled with the question of how to make AI more “sovereign” — that is, less dependent on U.S. and Chinese technology providers. 

“Our independence cannot be outsourced, it must be built here at home,” Macron wrote in a post on X in which he also announced that France and the Netherlands would host a meeting of “Tech Creators” on Dec. 2. 

Amid a global outage of Microsoft software (since resolved), Mistral CEO Arthur Mensch urged leaders to direct some €260 billion currently spent on foreign technology toward home-grown tech infrastructure, research and development. While the bloc has solid foundations on which to build AI solutions, Europe needs “speed, financing and a strong coordination between member states,” said Mensch.

But the AI discussion quickly ceded ground to existential questions about Ukraine, including how the bloc would finance Kyiv in coming months and whether Europe would get a seat at the table in upcoming rounds of Ukraine-Russia talks brokered by the U.S.

Just as leaders including Ukraine’s president were gathering in Dublin, Russian President Vladimir Putin said he was open to Europeans joining the talks, reversing Moscow’s previous opposition. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov quickly followed up with qualifications, however, stating that Europeans must first demonstrate “genuine intention and readiness to contribute to the peace process” before being admitted — a condition that Kallas quickly dismissed as a “trap.”

“If we start to talk about what Russia is asking regarding the security architecture, we actually walk into the traps that Russia is setting us, which is that we divert attention away from that there is no ceasefire,” she told reporters in Dublin.

Other officials said that Russia’s preconditions for allowing Europe to join the talks would mean concessions to Moscow’s war demands, namely a withdrawal of NATO from European states bordering Russia, the lifting of sanctions and a ban on foreign troops in Ukraine.

Giorgio Leali, Pieter Haeck, Sebastian Starcevic, Caroline Hug and Shawn Pogatchnik contributed to this article from Dublin.

LONDON — Some European leaders wanted a superhero negotiator to take on Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, secure a fair peace deal for Ukraine, and safeguard the continent’s own security, as ceasefire talks gather pace. 

They were never going to find one. 

That had already become the view of diplomats and officials close to the discussions, granted anonymity to comment on the sensitive Ukraine peace process that’s dividing opinion in European capitals, even before the EU decided on Friday that it would have to be a team effort. 

The push to identify one representative to speak for Europe was understandable. The appeal of having a single, respected leader taking the reins is largely based on a desire to project European strength and unity — as well as an interest in making negotiations with Russia, the U.S. and Ukraine efficient and effective. 

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy himself said this week he wanted Europe to identify within days who will take its place in the talks, and suggested he’d prefer it was one person (he even indicated that he had a preference, though would not reveal a name).

He didn’t get his way. Instead, leaders at a summit in Dublin on Friday, decided that the “E5” made up four big EU countries ― Germany, France, Poland and Italy ― and the U.K., plus officials from the European Commission and Council, would take the work forward as a team.

Technical discussions

The search for a top representative to fill Europe’s seat at the negotiating table at the next round of peace talks had become a political obsession in Brussels that missed at least two big points. 

The first is that the leadership level is not currently where the negotiations are at. Talks this week in Abu Dhabi were technical discussions between senior officials. The big political players like Putin and Zelenskyy were not there, never mind Trump. Russia sent a Kremlin aide to lead its team and Ukraine tasked its intelligence chief with making its case. 

If these officials make progress toward a deal, leaders will no doubt want to get involved. Ultimately, it will be leaders who sign any peace agreements that follow — and there’s no limit on the number of EU presidents or prime ministers who could join such a meeting as signatories or guarantors of the final deal. 

The next thing that needs to happen, according to both Ukraine and the U.S. envoys mediating the talks, is for Europe to join the discussion with Russia — at this technical level. 

‘Not a superstate’ 

The second point some member states and Brussels insiders were missing is structural: There are just too many European stakeholders with equally important but very distinct interests and remits, making consolidation of all the different strands under one person impossible. 

The Commission can’t negotiate Europe’s future security architecture — that’s for NATO members and national capitals to decide. But equally NATO, Paris and Berlin cannot negotiate EU sanctions or Ukraine’s accession to the bloc — these are in the Commission’s remit. 

And the idea that the “E3” — Europe’s big economic and military beasts of Germany, France and the U.K. — would let either the Commission, the European Council or NATO do it all on their behalf is not realistic. 

As one EU diplomat put it: “The reason why Europe hasn’t found one person who can represent the whole of Europe is that Europe is not a superstate.” 

In the context of the Ukraine talks, European interests encompass many EU member states but also countries like the U.K., and Norway, as well as Turkey and Moldova, the diplomat said. “Who can promise troops on the ground on behalf of the rest of Europe? Who can offer billions in financing? It’s difficult.” 

The conclusion some officials involved in the Abu Dhabi process reached was that Europe would have to be represented by a team, much as it has been already, albeit at one step removed from the main negotiating room so far. Different members of that team will own different issues. 

What Putin wants

Then there’s the question of content: What will be discussed and what will Team Europe’s collective position be? 

“What we actually say is more important than the exact configuration of the people in the room,” Sweden’s Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said on his way into Friday’s meeting of EU leaders.

The reason why American and Ukrainian officials want Europe’s participation is because they believe beginning a discussion about reshaping the continent’s security structures could unlock a more cooperative approach from Russia. 

Russia’s top negotiator Vladimir Medinsky said Europe’s security framework was the main topic discussed in Abu Dhabi this week: “The conflict in Ukraine showed that the entire security system operating after Yalta and Potsdam is working poorly, and an abscess broke through in Ukraine,” he said. 

Ukraine’s team noted that the hardline Russian approach softened a little when Moscow’s representatives saw the chance to talk about their wider demands on European security.

But Europe itself wasn’t part of that conversation.

Timing is still everything

The first thing to resolve will be on the sequencing of the negotiations — most significantly, when should Europeans allow themselves to discuss Russia’s demand to overhaul regional security? This is a critical and potentially existential question for European countries. And it is already a subject on which top EU officials are weighing their positions with care. 

Those close to the talks believe a clever way can be found to offer Russia a conversation about regional security as part of careful sequencing of the negotiations, without binding the issue completely into the final peace agreement for Ukraine. 

But different EU spokespeople are saying different things on this sequencing point, in what is either a clever strategy, or a sign of continuing disarray.

Kaja Kallas, the EU’s top centrally contracted diplomat, said there must be no discussion of wider European security architecture — such as NATO configurations, troop deployments and working forums for consultations with Russia — until after the peace deal is finalized. 

But in Abu Dhabi, EU officials signaled their readiness to allow parallel tracks in the talks,  so Ukraine’s peace settlement and Europe’s future security structures could be discussed at the same time. 

Officials in national capitals also agree that the “sequencing” of the negotiations on this point is key. Behind the scenes different countries and factions have different views on what the right strategy should be, just as they struggle with the question of whether it’s right to engage directly with Putin at all. 

And of course the question of Europe’s role may yet be moot. The U.S. envoys said on Thursday night that Putin had consented to letting Europe join the talks, but the Kremlin called this into question on Friday. 

After the negotiations in Abu Dhabi concluded this week, Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and senior envoy, acknowledged the twin problems he faces. “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,” he said.

BRUSSELS — The European Union institutions kept calm and carried on regulating on Friday, as many other parts of the world muttered at their computers over a massive digital outage at U.S. tech leader Microsoft.

The European Commission, Council of the EU and European Parliament were able to carry on business as usual, with systems remaining largely unaffected.

Microsoft’s global outage, which disrupted Outlook, Teams and Copilot started on Thursday, with internet traffic monitoring site Downdetector reporting issues in at least 74 countries. The tracker logged nearly 140,000 reports of Outlook problems at its peak.

Microsoft on Friday morning said recovery was still uneven. “At this time, we have no evidence of malicious activity associated with this incident. We will continue to treat this with urgency until full mitigation,” it said.

At the European Commission “the impact … is very limited and does not affect our operations,” spokesperson Thomas Regnier told POLITICO. He said the outage had a “minor impact on a limited number of applications, such as the slowness of SharePoint.” Outlook and Teams were “fully operational,” Regnier said.

The Council of the EU, which gathers representatives of national governments, also carried on work: Outlook and Teams were “working on our side,” a Council official told POLITICO, declining to give more details on the institution’s IT setup.

The Parliament’s press service said in a statement to POLITICO that it was unaffected and was monitoring the situation as a precaution.

The outage is exposing the reliance of companies and governments on Microsoft services — an issue that has also been a longstanding concern in Europe among proponents of keeping more control over IT and digital infrastructure.

In October last year, a similar outage of Amazon Web Services servers prompted immediate calls for Europe to boost its tech sovereignty.

Efforts to move away from American tech providers got a boost in the past two years due to concerns that the U.S. administration of Donald Trump could disrupt digital services in Europe for political gain. Governments across Europe have launched a wide range of initiatives to boost local competitors to U.S. Big Tech and build public services on homegrown platforms.

One example is the government of Germany’s northernmost state of Schleswig-Holstein, which in 2025 moved about 40,000 mailboxes from Microsoft Exchange and Outlook to open-source alternatives to reduce their reliance on U.S. tech.

The state’s digitalization minister, Dirk Schrödter, said in a comment to POLITICO on Friday that disruptions like the Microsoft outage “must be taken very seriously,” whether the state uses open-source software or products from individual providers. “We must be able to intervene ourselves at any time if problems arise,” he said.

Francesca Micheletti contributed to this report.

MADRID — Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez sees little room for optimism regarding today’s world. “At the end of this path lies another world war,” the Socialist wrote in today’s edition of the U.S. publication Foreign Affairs.

In an op-ed that encapsulates his government’s foreign policy views, Sánchez said the erosion of multilateralism is “multiplying the chances that any crisis will quickly spiral into planetary annihilation.”

According to most polls, Sánchez is set to lose power after the Nov. 29 snap election in his country, with right-wing and far-right parties expected to win a majority in parliament. In the op-ed he defended his government’s recent actions, such as Madrid’s decision earlier this year to deny Washington the use of Spanish bases in its war against Iran.

It “was not an act of hostility toward an ally. Nor was it an expression of neutrality or sympathy for the Iranian regime,” Sánchez wrote. Instead, the decision was “a judgement that getting involved would enable escalation.”

Sánchez added that “to keep its commitment to peace, Spain had to be willing to say no, even when doing so carried a political cost.”

“Had more countries done the same, the wars in Gaza and Iran would have been far harder and costlier to wage,” the prime minister speculated, holding up the Spanish government he has led since 2018 as an example to be followed.

The Socialist also criticized the war-readiness strategy the European Union has recently endorsed, noting that “even centrist leaders are embracing the language of war preparedness.”

“Although they do not intend to start a war, their words feed a dangerous militaristic mindset,” the prime minister added.

Sánchez grounded his opposition to war in decades of Spanish civil society activism against armed conflict, flagging the ¡No a la guerra! (“No to war!”) protests in Spain from when the conservative government of José María Aznar backed the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

“The world cannot afford to ignore them again,” wrote Sánchez, who claims to have taken part in the demonstrations.

In the article Sánchez was skeptical of ad hoc solutions such as the Coalition of the Willing, a group of 34 countries that have promised enhanced aid to Ukraine, ascribing such initiatives to the ineffectiveness of multilateralism.

Instead, pitching himself as a champion of peace and small and mid-sized powers, he called for reform of the United Nations, including the Security Council, which “does not reflect today’s world.”

He urged that the veto powers of the Council’s permanent members be strictly limited, especially in cases involving “mass atrocities, genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes,” and advocated the eventual elimination of the veto.

He also proposed that the terms of the Council’s non-permanent members be extended and that seats be awarded primarily to countries from Africa and Latin America.

Finally, Sánchez supported the election of a woman as U.N. secretary-general.

BRUSSELS — Some 71% of Europeans want the EU to have its own army, according to new polling results seen by POLITICO that reveal growing unease about Washington’s reliability and deep divisions over Russia’s war in Ukraine.

The 2026 Trends report by security think tank GLOBSEC found that support for the European Union to have its own army was strong across the member countries surveyed, reaching 82% in Romania followed by Lithuania at 78% and France at 75%.

Even in countries traditionally wary of European defense integration, majorities backed the idea with some 70% of respondents in Poland and Bulgaria in support of an EU army, alongside 69% in Germany.

The findings come as European governments debate how to strengthen their military capabilities amid Russia’s continued aggression and growing uncertainty over the United States’ commitment to European security.

GLOBSEC surveyed respondents in 14 countries across the transatlantic space, including 11 EU member states, Ukraine, the United Kingdom and the United States.

The enthusiasm for European military capabilities did not appear to be a rebuke of NATO. Some 77% of respondents in the NATO countries surveyed said they would vote to remain members, while 78% of respondents in the EU countries surveyed supported developing the bloc’s own defense capabilities alongside the alliance.

There was also strong support for the most direct form of contribution to national defense: a draft. Among respondents in countries without compulsory military service, 64% favored its reintroduction, according to the report, with the highest numbers found in Czechia, France, Germany and Slovakia.

German exception

Attitudes toward Washington revealed a growing transatlantic divide. More than one-third of respondents across the European countries surveyed now consider the United States a security threat. Around half of respondents in Germany, France and Britain held that view, compared with roughly one-third in Central and Eastern Europe.

Germany was the only country surveyed where a majority regarded Washington as a security threat.

The country also stands apart for attitudes toward Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Some 40% of German respondents agreed with the claim that Ukraine’s treatment of Russian speakers justified the invasion, while 39% believed the West provoked the war.

Those views coincided with softer support for Kyiv. Just over half considered Ukraine’s fight important to German security, while nearly six in 10 would accept Ukrainian territorial concessions in exchange for peace.

The findings appear to highlight a political paradox — voters want a stronger European military, but remain committed to NATO even as confidence in its most powerful member erodes.

DUBLIN— It’s becoming a familiar pattern at European Council summits: EU leaders are summoned to discuss one big strategic issue, only for another political crisis to steal the show.

Friday’s gathering in Dublin appears unlikely to break that trend.

While EU leaders are ostensibly meeting for their first dedicated discussion on artificial intelligence, the agenda is already crowded with more immediate fights over Ukraine, the ongoing splits over the bloc’s next budget, and who will take the helm at the European Central Bank.

Formal talks begin at 9:45 a.m. followed by lunch around 1 p.m. and a press conference provisionally scheduled for 4:15 p.m.

Here are the five issues that really matter — and what to watch for.

1. AI: Can Europe compete at the frontier?

Leaders will debate how Europe can build its own AI capacity, from computing power and cloud infrastructure to chips and models. European Council President António Costa framed the discussion around sovereignty, asking leaders to consider “how Europe can become a leading and sovereign player” across the AI value chain.

The central question is whether Europe should build frontier models to rival U.S. and Chinese developers, or focus on applications built on those models. Finland’s Petteri Orpo and Estonia’s Kristen Michal have argued that Europe “can compete at the frontier” and must aim beyond merely adopting AI.

The obstacle, however, is money. Leaders will discuss how to fund the computing capacity needed to turn European research into products. They will also hear from the CEO of French AI company Mistral, Arthur Mensch, who has railed against abandoning the frontier, and AI pioneer Geoffrey Hinton about global rules for the technology. The EU’s position is that its AI Act already provides a regulatory framework.

What to watch: Whether leaders back frontier AI development — and commit money to it.

2. Ukraine talks: Who speaks for Europe?

One of the most consequential discussions of the day will be who should represent the EU in future Ukraine peace talks, with European officials continuing to squabble over the matter.

Europeans will invited to the next round of negotiations, U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff said Thursday after meeting Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow — a longstanding demand from the EU.

But Europe needs to choose a single person to represent them, ideally by the end of this month, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said earlier this week.

That’s a challenge for the bloc, which remains deeply divided over the choice.

Costa wants greater clarity on European representation and a coherent message from the bloc’s 27 members. EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas argues that the treaties already provide an answer: She and Costa should represent the bloc. Estonian PM Kristen Michal backed that position in an interview with POLITICO.

France and Germany disagree, however. President Emmanuel Macron said Thursday that Europe must first agree on its proposals and security vision. Chancellor Friedrich Merz backed the E3 (Germany, France and the U.K.) as “a well-established format,” adding: “I don’t see any problem at all with things staying that way.”

What to watch: Whether leaders clarify who speaks for Europe, or leave competing channels in place.

3. Ukraine financing: The €70 billion shortfall

Leaders are also expected to address Ukraine’s funding needs, as Kyiv faces a €70 billion shortfall next year.

Merz linked Ukraine funding to negotiations on the EU’s next long-term budget in a letter to Costa, drawing resistance from governments wary of further commitments. He said that Germany, the bloc’s biggest budget contributor, can’t accept free-riders on Ukraine and European security.

The funding debate is also tied to Europe’s leverage in any eventual settlement. Some lawmakers want frozen Russian assets placed in an EU-controlled structure, arguing in a letter sent Thursday that the funds should not be available for a deal struck without Europe.

The question of funding for Ukraine will likely resurface at the Nov. 26-27 summit.

What to watch: Whether peace talks shift the funding debate — and whether governments can narrow their differences before the November summit.

4. The EU budget: Deal-making, not a deal

The 2028-2034 EU budget is not formally on Friday’s agenda, but leaders are expected to discuss it on the sidelines. A new negotiating document, setting out possible compromises, is expected around Nov. 21 ahead of the summit.

No breakthrough is expected in Dublin. Merz has signaled he will use the gathering for bilateral talks, including with Macron.

What to watch: Signs that major contributors and governments threatening to block a deal are narrowing their differences.

5. The ECB race: A wider jobs bargain

After a first chat on Thursday in Dublin, Macron and Merz are expected to discuss the race to replace European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde. Spain’s Pablo Hernández de Cos and former Dutch central banker Klaas Knot are the leading contenders.

The presidency is part of a broader contest over three senior appointments, with Germany’s Isabel Schnabel and Ireland’s Philip Lane also due to leave the ECB’s Executive Board in 2027. Paris and Berlin both want the chief economist post, according to two officials briefed on the discussions. One suggested Germany could secure it by backing Hernández de Cos, who is seen as less hawkish than Knot.

A deal is expected at the Nov. 26-27 summit. Spanish PM Pedro Sánchez and Dutch leader Rob Jetten — both backing their country’s candidates — will miss Dublin amid domestic political pressures.

What to watch: Whether Macron and Merz begin trading support for the ECB’s top jobs ahead of November.

Hans von der Burchard, Giorgio Leali and Seb Starcevic contributed to this report.

DUBLIN — EU leaders gathering in Dublin on Friday will continue arguing over who should represent them in talks about Ukraine’s future after a day of ferocious diplomatic activity.

As Donald Trump’s administration intensifies its efforts to broker an end to Russia’s war and Europe may have secured a place at the table, bickering over who will speak on behalf of the bloc already looks like overshadowing the summit in the Irish capital — that wasn’t even supposed to be about Ukraine in the first place.

“You could even have a TV show about it,” Estonian Prime Minister Kristen Michal joked to POLITICO in an interview on Thursday, in a sign of just how stark the divisions have become among leaders. “But we are saving the best part for tomorrow.”

Russia’s full-scale invasion started in February 2022 and as Trump’s enthusiasm for brokering peace has ebbed and flowed, the EU has found itself edged out of the picture ― despite increasingly picking up the tab.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who met with about 50 EU and non-EU leaders in Dublin on Thursday, warned that Russia was seeking to reshape Europe’s security architecture and insisted that European governments must have a voice in the negotiations, following two days of Russia-Ukraine-U.S. negotiations in Abu Dhabi that largely left out the EU.

Trump’s envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, discussed the issue with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow earlier on Thursday before the American pair touched down in Dublin in the evening to offer Zelenskyy their thoughts.

The EU is united over the need to have a seat at the table as Ukraine’s main backer, but not on who it should send, with diplomats and officials telling POLITICO that the bloc has split into at least three camps.

In one, there is growing support for European Council President António Costa, whose role makes him the natural candidate to represent the bloc. In another, there’s France and Germany, both of which are reluctant to surrender their own places at the negotiating table to Brussels.

And then there’s the loneliest camp of all, the backers of Kaja Kallas. The bloc’s top diplomat would be the obvious pick, if not for her hawkishness on Russia, which some diplomats say could put off the Kremlin and make her a liability.

Costa is accountable

When it comes to speaking for Europe, there’s one man who’s already got that in his job description.

Costa is emerging as the most broadly acceptable candidate among EU capitals. His institutional role gives him a mandate to represent the bloc’s leaders on the world stage, while his position and background as a former Portuguese prime minister afford him some neutrality, according to a European diplomat, who was granted anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the discussions.

Estonia’s Michal was the first leader to come out in support of Costa, telling POLITICO his “mandate comes directly from the [European] Council” and makes him “accountable” to the EU’s member countries.

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who called for the issue to be added to the agenda of Friday’s talks, said she would be OK with Costa, while Luxembourg and Poland’s leaders also backed him in remarks to reporters Thursday.

Costa himself has also made it clear that the EU is represented internationally by its institutions — meaning him.

Kallas, however, is a much more divisive proposition.

Some diplomats see the former Estonian prime minister, who an EU official once said eats “Russians for “breakfast,” as an unacceptable interlocutor for the Kremlin.

“That’s a joke, right?” another European diplomat said of the prospect of Kallas representing the EU in the high-stakes talks, describing her as “probably the worst person you could pick.”

But others argue that it’s precisely this hawkish reputation that makes her the right person for the job. “It would make much more sense,” a second senior European diplomat told POLITICO. “That’s what Putin would do. He would pick whoever you don’t want to talk to.”

Michal argued Kallas’ role makes her a natural second to Costa, and that both will presumably be in their positions until their terms end in 2029, making them more reliable than a national leader. “Putin doesn’t have to like it,” he added.

Paris and Berlin are less keen

The biggest obstacle to choosing a negotiator, though, might not be Putin but the EU’s two biggest capitals.

France and Germany are unlikely to welcome an arrangement that gives Brussels a monopoly on representing Europe in negotiations, two European diplomats and an EU official told POLITICO.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz made his opposition clear Thursday, calling the participation of the E3 countries in talks on Ukraine “a well-established format.”

“We are also working together on this task with five representatives — from Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, and Poland. I see absolutely no problem with keeping it that way,” he said.

Paris also has little incentive to hand over its seat at the table. France is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council and possesses Europe’s only nuclear arsenal, giving it diplomatic and military leverage that no EU institution can replicate, French MEP Fabrice Leggeri of National Rally told POLITICO, adding he could “hardly imagine” Costa or Kallas speaking for Paris.

“France, Germany, and the U.K.,” the E3 countries, “will always be France, Germany and the U.K.,” Estonia’s Michal argued, adding nothing stopped them from talking bilaterally to Moscow. But on decision-making affecting the whole continent, they needed to get on board with “consensual politics.”

“This is what the European Union is,” he said. “This is the basis of having this kind of consensual politics and keeping everybody together on the same page against Russia.”

EU leaders are unlikely to formally appoint an envoy at Friday’s gathering, but discussions could produce a broader “understanding” about how Europe should be represented, a senior EU official said.

Irish Foreign Minister Helen McEntee told POLITICO that at Friday’s talks, leaders will still need to “tease through” the issue “a little bit more.”

They may not have that much time, though. Zelenskyy this week urged the EU to hurry up and pick someone — anyone — to speak for it. “I think that in November, not later, we need to accept who will represent Europe in negotiations,” he said.

Giorgio Leali, Hans von der Burchard, Jacopo Barigazzi and Caroline Hug contributed to this report.

BRUSSELS — It takes an 80-year-old German diplomat to put the Jensen Huang spy scandal in proper historical context. 

Asked about allegations that the Nvidia CEO was lured into an intimate relationship with a Chinese spy, Wolfgang Ischinger, Germany’s former ambassador to Washington, pointed to the past. “In World War I, you had female spies who used the honey trap to talk to a general, and maybe sleep with him and extract some secrets,” he told POLITICO.

As Europe’s 27 leaders meet for their first conversation on AI the day after Huang’s resignation, his fall from grace is a reminder that it’s American tech bros — not European military men — who now hold the secrets that can decide the fate of the world.

Friday’s roundtable of European leaders in Dublin must reckon with the reality that the pursuit of AI superiority remains a two-horse race between the U.S. and China — and that Nvidia’s leadership drama doesn’t change the fact that a single American company’s chips will continue to drive the artificial intelligence boom.

With the meeting meant to help forge a new direction for Europe on AI, leaders will mostly be in listening mode, with presentations by Arthur Mensch, CEO of French AI company Mistral, and computer scientist Geoffrey Hinton, considered one of the “godfathers of AI” and an advocate for more stringent safety measures. 

“We’re not going to pretend that we are experts,” an EU official said.

The session comes as Europe struggles to find its place in global AI. The rise of advanced U.S.-built proprietary models and open-weight artificial intelligence progress in China has created a new range of national security issues — and while the EU has proven to be a leader in regulating the technology, its own would-be frontier AI labs continue to play catch-up.

Although this week’s events are a reminder to European politicians that they are spectators in the AI race, an emerging split between top industry leaders in Europe is also dampening momentum on a bloc-wide effort to take on the competition.

“Switching dependency from California to France doesn’t solve Europe’s sovereignty problem, right?” Uljan Sharka, CEO of leading Italian company Domyn, said in an interview.

Sovereignty

Sovereignty and security are the main arguments for Europe not to abandon efforts to develop its own frontier AI models. In the past year, EU officials and companies have struggled to access the latest models from OpenAI and Anthropic, which drive much of the current risks around the technology. 

“How can Europe become a leading and sovereign player in strategic areas of the AI value chain?” European Council President António Costa asked EU leaders in his invitation letter. 

Yet in classic European fashion, officials disagreed ahead of the meeting on how to catch up across many layers of the AI supply chain, from chips and cloud services to cutting-edge models.

“We cannot abandon the frontier ambition. It’s an issue of our sovereignty, it’s an issue of our competitiveness,” Malgorzata Nikowska, head of unit at the European Commission’s Artificial Intelligence Office, said at an event last week. 

It was a moment of clarity in a frantic debate about whether Europe should still chase the frontier in AI, which would require ploughing billions of euros into compute power — or focus on deriving value by applying the technology in key industries. 

Mistral’s Mensch has been a key voice in that debate, warning that giving up the frontier would be “a fundamental mistake” in an essay titled “Build or Surrender.” 

Two European PMs — Finland’s Petteri Orpo and Estonian Kristen Michal — came out swinging ahead of Friday’s meeting, saying “Europe can compete at the frontier” and that the bloc’s ambition “must go beyond adoption of AI,” in a letter exclusively seen by POLITICO.

These statements, and Mensch’s presence at the table Friday, suggest EU leaders will commit to continuing to build competitive frontier models. But how to get there is a far more vexed question — and European industry executives are offering different answers. 

Mistral has taken the route of building large open models. Its latest Large 4 model crossed the 1-trillion-parameter mark, allowing it to rival some of the world’s best open models such as from China’s Moonshot AI. 

To get there, the French company relied on President Emmanuel Macron as its best-placed salesman, and multi-billion euro funding rounds valuing the company at over €21 billion. 

But Mistral’s European rivals don’t necessarily agree with Mistral’s approach of training large models through vast amounts of compute power. 

Sharka — whose company was chosen to lead an EU-backed consortium to develop an open-source AI model that can cover the 24 EU languages by next year — argues Europe should not follow the example of OpenAI and Anthropic to use ever-more compute power for ever-larger models.

Instead, Sharka argued, it should aim to optimize the training runs of the models. “To build the European frontier, we need to be original,” he said. “I think we need to shift away from the concept of copy-pasting like unfortunately some players are pushing.” 

He argued that the typical AI scaling laws, which claim that a model performs better if it is larger and has more compute power, have “plateaued.” 

“There’s only one way, and it’s not the Mistral way to be clear,” he said, adding that there’s a “lot of space for optimization.” 

Mistral did not respond to a request for comment.

The Nvidia problem

Sharka was joined in his assessment by Aldo Podestà, CEO of Swiss AI model provider Giotto.ai., who argued there are ways to be more efficient about “pre-training,” typically the most compute-intensive part of building an AI model.

“We have the opportunity to be at the frontier without having that massive pre-training cost,” Podestà said. “My bet would be to have one very strong common open-source pre-training exercise” — after which different companies can tweak the outcome to their needs.

Under any scenario, Europe will still rely on the U.S. for the hardware components that power its AI models — especially Nvidia’s AI chips — since the continent has little design or production capacity of its own. 

Podestà said the bloc shouldn’t worry merely about building its own models.

“We need to open up a serious discussion about the hardware dependency we have,” he said. “Today it’s a monopoly for a single company.”

DUBLIN — Volodymyr Zelenskyy pressed EU governments to step up participation in Ukraine peace negotiations as he talked with world leaders hours before he’s due to hear about Thursday’s Moscow discussions between Vladimir Putin and U.S. officials.

“When the Americans and the Russians talk about this, it’s not just about security guarantees for Ukraine,” the Ukrainian president told leaders at the start of a summit in Dublin. “It’s more about some kind of new security framework between Europe and Russia.”

While he said it’s “very good that Europeans are now part of these talks,” they don’t speak directly to Russia so “we need to make sure that Europe becomes a regular part of this negotiation.”

Two days of peace negotiations between Russia, Ukraine and the U.S. in Abu Dhabi ended on Wednesday without a breakthrough ― and without European officials joining the talks. EU governments continue to disagree over who would represent them. U.S. President Donald Trump’s envoys, Steve Witkoff and  Jared Kushner, met the Russian leader on Thursday and will dash to Dublin to update Zelenskyy on Thursday evening.

Speaking on his way into the European Political Community summit in the Irish capital ― a gathering of 50 EU and non-EU leaders ― German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said he had received positive signals from the Abu Dhabi talks, but also stressed that Ukraine and Europe must be involved.

“I expect the Russian government and the Russian president to finally agree to these joint talks,” Merz said. “We will also discuss who, if necessary, will represent the European Union. But that is a matter we will discuss behind closed doors and not air publicly.”

EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas struck a more skeptical tone, saying she had seen no goodwill from Moscow and insisted that a ceasefire must come before discussions on a peace agreement or Europe’s wider security architecture.

“Americans are representing American interests, Europeans are representing European interests,” she said, adding that EU treaties signal that European Council President António Costa and she should represent the bloc in any talks— a solution backed by Estonian Prime Minister Kristen Michal in an interview with POLITICO.

French President Emmanuel Macron said that Europe must first agree on its own peace proposals and vision for future European security before deciding who should represent it.

The substance of Europe’s negotiating position should determine the format of any talks, rather than the other way around, he told reporters on the way into the summit.

“Without Europeans there is no support for Ukraine, let’s be honest,” he said, arguing that U.S. involvement has declined. “There is some mediation, fine. But at the end of the day we will be the ones to define and decide for our future security as Europeans. I have no doubt about it.” 

Luxembourg Prime Minister Luc Frieden backed Costa as the EU’s representative, while Irish Taoiseach Micheál Martin called for a “clear, coherent leadership from the European Union at that table” warning that it remained unclear whether Russia was genuinely interested in peace.

Bulgarian Prime Minister Rumen Radev warned that Europe’s place in future negotiations was still not guaranteed, while his Czech counterpart, Andrej Babiš, expressed optimism that the bloc was moving closer to securing a seat at the table.

The issue is set to be discussed at Friday’s informal European Council following Meloni’s request. Costa agreed to make time for the discussion, on top of the original agenda focusing on AI.

KYIV — The Kremlin continued its onslaught against Ukraine just hours after peace talks in Abu Dhabi ended, attacking Kyiv with ballistic missiles and 123 attack drones Thursday.

Ukraine reportedly shot down 94 attack drones and no missiles, while one person was killed in Kyiv and five were injured, Mayor Vitaliy Klitschko said. Emergency services also reported fires in the Rivne and Zhytomyr regions.

Russia’s defense ministry claimed responsibility for the attack and said it was targeting drone production sites and electricity substations. Moscow also reported shooting down some 70 Ukrainian drones over eight regions overnight.

The mutual attacks came hours after Russia and Ukraine concluded another round of trilateral peace talks, mediated by the United States. While both sides agreed to prepare another major prisoner swap, other issues, including territory and Europe’s participation in future talks, reportedly caused heated debates at the negotiating table.

A member of the Ukrainian delegation, David Arakhamia, described negotiations as some of the toughest yet, saying the Russians made strict demands and left little room for compromise.

“Every inch of our land will be returned,” Vladimir Medinsky, head of the Russian delegation, said after the negotiations, describing Ukraine as “an abscess that burst.” In addition to demanding Ukrainian territories, the Kremlin called for the establishment of a new security architecture in Europe.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said territory remained one of the many topics discussed during the latest round, with the U.S. mediators focusing on different ways to solve the territorial spat, mainly in the Donbas region.

“They believe that to stop this war, we must leave our own territory. It is impossible to speak to us in such a way when it concerns the independence of our country. They are trying to find some variations of this. And I have heard various things,” Zelenskyy said during a press conference in Dublin on Wednesday.

“The idea was something like this: If the war were to stop along the current front line, then parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions could subsequently be administratively transferred to the jurisdiction of a different oblast. But that was just one of roughly a million different ideas,” a senior official, who was granted anonymity to discuss classified details, told POLITICO.

“This does not mean that Ukraine will ever recognize the occupied territories as Russian,” the official added.

THE HAGUE — Beijing is overseeing nearly 1,250 overseas policing outposts in more than 90 countries to crack down on dissidents, according to a report by a human rights advocacy organization.

The report described Europe as a hotspot with hundreds of Beijing’s policing offices across some two dozen European countries, which it said exposed China’s growing attempts to control its diaspora.

Researchers at the Spain-based organization, Safeguard Defenders, gathered open-source evidence from the Chinese Party-state to examine the extent to which the Chinese diaspora is monitored, surveilled and policed around the world.

These policing outposts “act as the Chinese Communist Party operatives for community surveillance and enforcement abroad,” according to the report.

The report lands at an awkward time for Europe’s trade officials. Ditte Juul Jørgensen, head of the EU’s trade department — which has been working to balance the trade relationship with Beijing — will meet with China’s Vice Minister of Commerce Ling Ji in Brussels on Thursday.

Europe is attempting to walk a fine line with its relations with Beijing. EU legislation proposed in January seeks to kick risky Chinese suppliers out of Europe’s most critical industries over cybersecurity concerns, while supply chain dependencies and political coercion remain ongoing challenges. The EU’s top diplomat Kaja Kallas has also raised concerns about what she said was China’s enabling of Russia’s war in Ukraine and credible reports of China training Russia’s military.

Overseas outposts

The report builds on initial revelations from Safeguard Defenders in 2022 that identified more than 100 facilities around the world, which the NGO described as overseas outposts of China’s security apparatus. Back then, that report said Beijing announced its “first batch” of “30 overseas police service stations in 25 cities in 21 countries.” 

Following the revelations, some governments denounced the overseas police stations as illegal, and some pursued criminal investigations, the NGO said in its latest report. In response, Beijing claimed the stations had been closed, it added.

“Far from closing, the evidence shows expansion: today more than 10 police forces from five Chinese provinces work through a global network of Chinese Communist Party operatives abroad,” the new report says.

The latest paper was presented at a conference hosted by the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC), a gathering of 52 cross-party lawmakers from 30 countries that campaigns for a more coordinated response to the Chinese Communist Party. Policymakers raised numerous concerns at the event in The Hague earlier this month — about what they considered security threats of critical infrastructure, trade dependencies and potential risks from a future conflict between China and Taiwan that would disrupt shipping.

The Chinese foreign ministry and state media have previously called IPAC an “anti-China” group and accused it of spreading disinformation and interfering in China’s internal affairs, particularly over Taiwan.

China’s Ministry for Foreign Affairs and its European Union mission didn’t respond to requests for comment on the report. China has previously denied running overseas police stations and says it doesn’t interfere in other countries’ internal affairs and that it respects international law.

In 2023, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson rejected the term “police stations,” saying the “institutions helped overseas Chinese who could not return to China due to the pandemic, renew their driving licence and perform physical examination.” 

Tip of the iceberg

These 1,250 offices were “the tip of the iceberg,” according to the NGO, which said it was conservative in how it mapped and linked them to China’s policing system. To be counted, they had to be officially connected to China’s police or prosecutors and have open-source evidence of overseas activities, report author Laura Harth said. This meant broader influence or interference operations were excluded.

“All of them serve to control and instill fear in diaspora communities … all of them represent a standing national security risk,” she said.

Slovakian MEP Miriam Lexmann, who is part of the European Parliament’s trade committee and China delegation — lawmakers tasked with maintaining and managing legislative ties between the EU and China — said people needed to become more aware of the security threats posed by China.

“It means that our free countries are no longer free anymore for everyone because they are not able to guarantee freedom of speech, freedom of behavior to people who are in our country,” she told POLITICO in reference to the operations.

China’s surveillance through facial recognition and interference in communications was “the exact behavior of the former Soviet Stasi,” she said, but worse since the technology is now much more sophisticated.

The main concern expressed by lawmakers attending the IPAC conference was China’s relationship with Russia, and its help in propping up the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine. Their discussions included what this could mean for a future conflict and war on two fronts if Beijing were to try and take Taiwan militarily while NATO countries were attacked by Russia.

“The road to escalation in the Taiwan Strait can run right through what’s happening in Ukraine and in Kyiv,” said Dutch lawmaker Jan Paternotte, who co-chaired the IPAC conference.

ANTALYA, Turkey — World leaders and industry must make electric cars and heat pumps affordable if they are to ensure “people on all incomes” can “make the green transition,” U.K. Prime Minister Andy Burnham told the COP31 climate summit.

During a flying visit to this year’s U.N. conference in Turkey, Burnham — who has made affordability his core domestic political focus — reaffirmed the U.K.’s commitment to the goal of net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

But he warned that the world had “not moved as quick as I had hoped in the past five years” to show citizens that climate action and electrification have cost-of-living upsides.

“The last of these meetings I attended was COP26 as the mayor of Greater Manchester,” Burnham said, referring to the 2021 summit hosted by the U.K. He warned at the time that the climate movement must not lose sight of the “struggles of ordinary families.”

“The world feels very different now, and we need to adapt,” Burnham said. “Electrification in transport, heat and industry is how we make clean power, cheap power.”

While voicing support for COP31 hosts Turkey and Australia’s electrification push, Burnham stopped short of backing the specific target of 35% of global energy use shifting to electricity by 2035.

But he emphasized the benefits the switch could bring, while urging industry to help ensure it helped all consumers.

“If you drive a new electric car today in the U.K., it costs less than a petrol equivalent. Get on the right tariff and a heat pump can be cheaper to run than a gas boiler. These technologies are becoming cheaper, but they are not available to everybody on all incomes,” he said.

“As a government, we are doing our bit by investing in innovation and subsidizing upfront costs for the public. But we need industry to play their part too, and help people on all incomes to make the green transition.”

The focus on EVs and heat pumps comes despite Burnham’s government cutting the subsidy pot for heat pumps at last month’s budget. Ministers are also weighing proposals to water down industry EV quotas.

Nonetheless, Burnham reiterated the U.K.’s over-arching strategy to cut dependence on fossil fuels.  

“The climate crisis is not a distant threat. It is upon us all now, devastating lives and livelihoods everywhere. Meanwhile, two wars across two continents have sent fuel prices and gas bills soaring for families and businesses across the world,” he said. “The common thread running through all of this: our dependence on fossil fuels.”

He announced the U.K. would use its G20 presidency next year to “put climate resilience back on the agenda, with debt, development, and insurance as key issues.”

Burnham’s government has also created a new role of special representative for climate security, appointing former head of the Joint Intelligence Committee Chair Madeline Alessandri to the post.

Over 50 leaders are descending on Dublin today for the European Political Community summit — but it’s not a popular one.

Today on the show, Zoya Sheftalovich and Kathryn Carlson discuss why insiders don’t find the forum particularly useful, and some even hope it will end once French President Emmanuel Macron — who spearheaded the initiative — leaves office.

One meeting leaders are more eager to attend, however, is Friday’s informal European Council, also taking place in Dublin. High on the agenda is the thorny question of who should represent Europe in future Ukraine peace talks, as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy ups the pressure with a November deadline. Plus, AI will be a crucial topic: from Europe’s place in the global AI race to cybersecurity concerns.

Finally, Finland’s embassy in Canberra is going viral … and no one quite knows why.

Questions? Comments? Message us on WhatsApp here or at +32 491 05 06 29.

Articles mentioned in this episode:

• US to seek Putin’s ‘blessing’ for Europe to join Ukraine talks.
• Zelenskyy tells Europe to hurry up and pick a rep for peace talks with Russia.
• Finland’s embassy in Canberra is going viral — and no one knows why.
  

ABU DHABI — When Jared Kushner walked into the briefing room to announce the results of two days of peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, he didn’t try to conceal how hard it had been. 

“The reality is there’s no trust right now between the sides,” Donald Trump’s son-in-law and trusted envoy told POLITICO during a post-talks briefing. “There were some pretty tough discussions.” 

The two sides, one led by a Kremlin aide and the other by Ukraine’s spy chief, discussed all the most difficult topics including the toughest — what happens to disputed territory — and fought hard for their own objectives, according to those in the room. 

The mood cooled from the first day to the second. On Tuesday, with negotiations lasting four and a half hours, officials on the ground in Abu Dhabi who were familiar with the talks described them as “constructive.” The best they could muster on Wednesday, when the session broke up after just two hours, was that the exchange had been “neutral.” 

In truth, few on the Ukrainian side ever believed this week’s resumption of face-to-face negotiations would deliver a breakthrough. The biggest announcement concerned the non-trivial matter of a planned prisoner exchange — which Kushner said would be the biggest in the war so far, but on even this they failed to announce the final agreed numbers. 

Yet despite the muted rhetoric, the meeting in the air-conditioned environs of a secure government guest house — where staff were constantly on hand to provide coffee, sandwiches and even pizza — was nevertheless a significant moment in the stop-start journey toward peace after nearly five years of war. 

Here’s what you need to know about where things stand.

What did they discuss?  

Everything. According to Kushner, there was no significant topic that was not raised over the two days. The question of territory, he said, would clearly be “the hardest” to resolve. According to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Kyiv’s negotiators scored a major win on day one by convincing the Americans to accept their analysis of where the front line stands, and just how much less Ukrainian territory Russia has conquered than Moscow claims. 

It’s hard to see a quick resolution on that issue, although privately U.S. officials say both sides have shown some flexibility on how to settle territorial claims. Zelenskyy still insists, and it seems the American mediators agree, that matters relating to the fate of Ukrainian land can only be discussed at the level of leaders. That kind of meeting is still very far away. “Clearly, there’s not great trust or love between the leaders,” Kushner said. 

What did they agree? 

A big prisoner exchange — potentially the largest since the start of the full-scale invasion in 2022. But even this isn’t yet final: Kushner made it clear that it would depend on approval from Vladimir Putin, and that he’d try to obtain that on Thursday on a visit to Moscow . 

“One of the positives was that we agreed that we’re going to have the biggest humanitarian release of prisoners — we’re gonna finalize the numbers tomorrow,” Kushner said. He said he would be traveling with Steve Witkoff, Trump’s other envoy, “to Moscow tomorrow to meet with President Putin, to go over what was discussed today, and try to make more progress on some of the issues.” 

Ukraine’s negotiators said “strict directives” from Moscow had limited the scope of their Russian counterparts to reach agreements this week, making the talks harder. 

What happens next? 

The Moscow trip is key. Kushner said his other big goal in speaking to Putin would be to get him to allow Europeans to join the next round of negotiations. “I believe that hopefully tomorrow in Moscow, Steve and I will be successful and President Putin will give the blessing for that to occur. I think that if he agrees to that we will be able to make a lot more progress,” Kushner said in response to a question from POLITICO. 

Then the Americans plan to head to Dublin to meet Zelenskyy in person and try to push the agenda forward. The Ukrainians want to get the next date in their diary for more talks because they hope to have a deal before the end of the year, with Russia ramping up strikes on Ukraine’s power grids and energy facilities and another winter looming. 

The big shift 

Arguably, the biggest change in recent days has been in America’s attitude. This was never simply a negotiation between Russia and Ukraine, after all; ever since Trump returned to power nearly two years ago, Kyiv and Brussels have been trying to persuade Washington to take their arguments more seriously. For Ukraine’s European allies, that lobbying has paid off. 

Kushner and Witkoff now want European officials to join the next round of negotiations — so they can move on to discussing one of Putin’s most totemic obsessions: Relations with NATO, and the future system of European security. 

“We need to have the Europeans at the table,” Kushner said, answering a question from POLITICO at the briefing. “We have relayed to President Putin directly several times and to his team that the only way to get this done is to have them by our side, and I think they are receptive to it.”

Ukrainian negotiators said Russian attitudes only started to soften — and open to dialogue — once the U.S. moved to discuss postwar settlements for both sides.

On Ukraine, too, American attitudes have changed. Only a few weeks ago Trump was angrily demanding that Zelenskyy be replaced amid a bust-up over Ukraine’s criticism of the U.S. president’s diesel deal with Putin. Russia, Trump said, had been “fine” on Ukraine. 

Now, however, Kushner is careful to praise the Ukrainian negotiating team and “the great efforts” they made in Abu Dhabi. “I think they fought very, very hard for their issues, were very constructive, and I think it was a very productive session.” The Ukrainians also expressed gratitude to the U.S. side. 

Europe’s big question 

It’s one thing to be invited to take part in real talks with Russia and Ukraine — and Europeans have yet to be given even this chance. But it’s another to participate and then influence the conversation when it finally happens. For that, Europe needs to choose its representatives wisely. 

Zelenskyy says he wants to be consulted on who should get the role of speaking for Europe — and that it should be a single person. He also wants Europe to decide by the end of this month. 

So far, however, Europe’s approach has been anything but streamlined. Attending the talks on the sidelines in Abu Dhabi were representatives of the European Commission, the European Council, NATO, the U.K., France, Germany and Italy. 

Wearing his diplomatic hat, Kushner described this arrangement as “strong” — but added 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.”

Europe’s danger moment 

If the latest negotiations have achieved nothing else, after months of worrying about being left on the sidelines, Europe now finds itself — subject to Putin’s approval, of course — in the thick of the most perilous negotiations in the continent’s recent history. 

One critical question is how far talks about changing the continental security framework, which is underpinned by NATO, will be tied to the peace negotiations regarding Ukraine. Europeans have long campaigned for Ukraine to get the strongest possible security guarantees to prevent Russia from attacking again when the war ends. And U.S. officials want to explore the idea of providing a NATO-like collective defense agreement with Ukraine that could even involve NATO itself as a guarantor. 

Officials in European capitals say the sequencing of these talks will be critical. The European side has signaled its willingness to explore the continent’s wider security system to allay Russia’s concerns — in parallel with the Ukraine peace process. But they don’t want to sign up to any wider reforms until peace has been achieved. 

‘Trying to survive’

Kushner said the aim was to discuss all the issues and then “find a pathway to settle them all at the same time.” 

“I think that having these discussions is very important,” he said. “But the implementation of postwar security will not occur until there’s an agreement on territory and on all other bilateral issues.” 

If that position holds, it could work for Europe. But in the end, anything agreed among officials in the negotiating room is always provisional. All it would take is a phone call from Putin to Trump. 

Some Europeans are wary. German officials involved in the Abu Dhabi talks see very little potential upside and view the process as a “Russian trap” to give a false impression that Moscow is willing to make peace, said one German official with knowledge of talks, who was granted anonymity to speak frankly. 

“The Europeans are only trying to survive this,” the official said.

James Angelos and Veronika Melkozerova contributed reporting.

BRUSSELS—The European Union should have a plan to respond to serious artificial intelligence incidents, two EU countries said ahead of a key Friday meeting of national leaders focused on AI.

In a letter seen by POLITICO, Finland and Estonia say the bloc “can still compete at the frontier” of AI by mobilizing capital and building up compute power, but this should go hand in hand with “governing it responsibly.”

The two countries, considered among Europe’s digital leaders, call for “EU-level arrangements for responding to serious AI incidents.”

AI safety and security are on Friday’s agenda of the first-ever European Council meeting devoted to the revolutionary new technology.

Concerns about whether Europe is prepared to respond to AI-powered threats have been picking up steam since a series of incidents this summer in which AI agents went rogue and hacked into other companies. Recent cyberattacks and revelations of coding vulnerabilities have also raised concerns that security systems must be better equipped for the arrival of artificial intelligence.

Hungary pushed for a network of national contact points in case AI model providers lose control of their models, in an October paper seen by POLITICO. The country also pushed for a team of “pre-vetted, security-cleared” independent evaluators who can be ahead of incidents.

The letter from Finland and Estonia called for investment in European frontier AI models “as an economic priority and as a foundation for Europe’s influence on the future of AI.”

The countries warn that Europe requires “independent capacity to evaluate the most advanced models and their safety and security risks.”

ATHENS — A controversial maritime border deal between Libya and Turkey has riled Greece, annoyed the European Union — and could intrude on Friday’s EU leaders’ summit.

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis will raise the issue during the informal meeting of EU leaders in Dublin, according to a senior official in Athens who spoke on condition of being granted anonymity. The summit is supposed to focus on AI and Ukraine.

The row centers on a Turkey-Libya agreement that claims a corridor in the eastern Mediterranean between Greece and Cyprus — waters Athens says fall within its exclusive economic zone and where the EU has backed energy and connectivity projects.

“Greece has explicitly stated … that in the event of any escalation, it will request sanctions and support from the European Union,” Greece’s Foreign Minister Giorgos Gerapetritis said last week in an interview with local TV.

Despite being NATO allies, Greece and Turkey have quarreled over maritime boundaries and overlapping claims to their continental shelves. Athens fears Ankara could invoke the Libya deal to challenge offshore exploration south of Crete and the EU-funded undersea electricity cable linking Greece and Cyprus, turning both projects into flashpoints.

Turkey signed the agreement in 2019 with Libya’s U.N.-backed government in Tripoli, and it was unanimously ratified by rival authorities in eastern Libya on Oct. 20.

The EU immediately responded.

“This agreement infringes upon the sovereign rights of third states, it does not comply with the Law of the Sea, and is null and void,” said a joint statement on Oct. 20 from the heads of the European Commission and Council.

Egypt also rejected the border pact, as did Bahrain, Cyprus (which has its own separate disputes with Turkey over Ankara’s occupation of the northern part of the island since the 1970s), Israel and the United Arab Emirates.

Turkish foreign ministry accused Brussels of adopting what it called the “maximalist and illegal” positions of Greece and Cyprus that were “detached from reality.”

“We expect them to respect the joint will of our country and Libya,” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said during a recent Cabinet meeting.

Mitsotakis raised the issue at last month’s U.N. General Assembly, and Athens is now pressing the rest of the EU for stronger action.

“There is no precedent for such a diagonal delimitation,” he said in New York, holding up a map to illustrate Greece’s position. “Geography cannot be rewritten … and sovereign rights cannot be erased by drawing arbitrary lines on a map.”

The underwater border demarcation is part of a broader Turkish policy of stressing its sovereignty over coastal areas. Ankara aims to codify what it calls its Blue Homeland doctrine by year’s end.

The big test

Greece and Cyprus warn that Turkey’s claims could be used to block strategic projects in the eastern Mediterranean.

The EU’s latest report on Turkey’s stalled EU accession progress specifically referred to Ankara’s continued obstruction of a €1.9 billion electricity interconnection between Greece and Cyprus. The project was interrupted in 2024 amid a standoff between Athens and Ankara.

Three months ago, French company Meridiam became the project’s majority shareholder.

On Tuesday, a French vessel sailed from Heraklion, Greece, to start working on the project. Gerapetritis told a parliamentary committee last week that Athens is bracing for a Turkish reaction.

Tension over the maritime border and the energy project comes as Turkey’s already difficult ties with the EU — from protecting the car industry to Ankara’s role in Black Sea security — come under greater pressure, noted Carnegie Europe Turkey analyst Marc Pierini.

“In the eastern Mediterranean, several divergences over maritime borders have widened the gap between Turkey and EU governments,” wrote Pierini.

ABU DHABI — Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said European countries supporting his cause must decide fast who will represent them in peace talks.

That means ideally one person should have a mandate from the EU and other non-EU countries that have backed Ukraine, such as the U.K. and Norway, because “unity” is important, he suggested.

“I think that in November, not later, we need to accept who will represent Europe in negotiations,” he said. “It will be better because they will get [a] mandate for negotiations and they will get a mandate from all Europe, all this coalition.”

With Europe set to take on a more important role in talks with Russia and the United States, Zelenskyy’s comments join a growing chorus of demands for the EU and others to unite behind one top negotiator or a small team at the highest level.

Speaking to reporters during his trip to Denmark on Tuesday, the Ukrainian leader said he wanted a “dialogue” with the EU and other European powers over who will represent them. He said it would be “better” this way, rather than just presenting their answer to Ukraine, which is “not good, really.”

“I hope that not later than the end of November — better in Germany on 19th [at a Coalition of the Willing meeting] — fix it. We will see.”

Europe has been struggling to work out a plan for how to engage in top-level dialogue with Moscow and Washington over ending the war in Ukraine. Despite providing most of the foreign financing for Ukraine’s war effort, EU countries have been split over who should represent them, or whether they should be talking to Russian leader Vladimir Putin at all.

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni last week blasted the European Union’s engagement with the peace talks as “all over the place.”

Leaders are due to grapple with these questions at a summit in Dublin later this week.

As talks with Ukraine, Russia and the U.S. resumed in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday, American officials made clear they wanted Europe fully at the table next time the negotiations take place. That is partly because the U.S. wants to bring a review of wider European security arrangements for Europe into the negotiations over peace in Ukraine — a longstanding Russian demand.

ABU DHABI — After a nine-month break, Russian and Ukrainian negotiators met to restart face-to-face talks on how to end the four-and-a-half-year war, with tentative signs of early progress. 

The two sides discussed an exchange of prisoners, but contrary to some reports, it has not yet been finalized, according to one official familiar with the matter, who was granted anonymity because the meeting was confidential.

The talks in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday focused on what security guarantees Ukraine — and Russia — want to see after the war ends. On the second and final day of the meeting on Wednesday, negotiators are due to turn to the highly sensitive question of territory. Privately, U.S. officials who convened the meeting say both Russia and Ukraine have shown at least some readiness to be flexible on the issue of land. 

The meeting with Russia and the U.S. was “constructive and quite substantive,” Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy posted on X after receiving a report from his negotiating team. “They had time to discuss the need and possible parameters for humanitarian steps. The release of prisoners is a priority.”

Zelenskyy said the negotiating teams spoke “in detail” about what security guarantees would be required to stop Russia from attacking Ukraine again in the future. 

In a significant move toward easing Ukraine’s fears, the U.S. is asking the Russian side if they would consent to America providing Ukraine with NATO-like commitments to collective defense, or even for NATO to sign such an agreement itself. 

“Real tools are needed to block any recurrence of the war,” Zelenskyy said. 

According to Russian state media, the talks ended after 4.5 hours and were conducted in Russian. Alongside the Ukrainian and Russian negotiators, the United Arab Emirates foreign minister and NATO’s top commander in Europe were also at the table.

Earlier in the day, European representatives held talks with the American envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law, who convened the negotiations. The European side agreed with the Americans to review Europe’s wider security architecture as part of the peace process for Ukraine — a step toward meeting one of Russia’s central demands.

“It looks like the talks in Abu Dhabi were very productive,” U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said at the G-7 foreign ministers’ meeting in Paris. “There’s a lot of work to be done in that regard. It’s not like something that’s on the verge of being solved in the next 24 hours or anything like that.”

PARIS — Tehran denied accusations by Paris that it was behind the recent series of cyberattacks targeting supermarket refrigerators in France, calling the claims “baseless and biased.”

The Iranian foreign ministry said in a statement Tuesday that it “strongly condemns” France’s “worn-out policy of making accusations against Iran.”

French Minister of Foreign Affairs Jean-Noël Barrot on Monday said Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was responsible for the “unprecedented” cyberattacks against several supermarket chains last month. On Tuesday, Barrot said Paris would not “rule out anything” in its response to the attacks, which affected 700 food distribution sites.

“We’ll take all measures, including those we will not disclose publicly, which we ourselves consider proportionate and necessary to deter any further attacks and punish those responsible for this unacceptable aggression,” he said.

Iran’s ambassador to France has been summoned to the foreign ministry after French prosecutors said that they were opening an investigation into the hacks.

According to French investigators, Iran’s cyber unit linked to the IRGC, Shahid Kaveh, carried out the destructive attacks.

The French investigation will focus on the unit’s head, the Paris prosecutor’s office said in a statement, adding that about 20 fires had been started because of the cyberattack.

“The attackers took remote control of the equipment via web interfaces to trigger abnormal defrost cycles of unlimited duration, while disabling the security alerts on the sensors that were supposed to activate once a certain temperature was exceeded,” it added.

On Monday, European Council President Kaja Kallas said that the topic of alleged Iranian hacks would be discussed at next week’s European foreign affairs council. If the attribution is confirmed, she said, “[Europe’s] response should be strong.”

The European Commission is also looking into these cyberattacks, which European Agriculture and Food Commissioner Christophe Hansen described as a “deliberate attempt to disrupt our food supply chain.”

LISBON — The European Union should work “only with very trusted partners” on artificial intelligence microchips, its tech chief said Tuesday, just days after revelations of a spy scandal rocked industry leader Nvidia.

“When we speak about very critical technologies, like AI semiconductors and quantum technologies, cybersecurity, satellites … it’s very important that we are working very closely only with very trusted partners,” said Henna Virkkunen, the European Commission’s executive vice president for tech sovereignty. She made the comments in an interview with POLITICO at the Web Summit tech fair in Lisbon, when asked about Europe’s reliance on Nvidia.

It is Virkkunen’s first public comment since Nvidia opened an internal investigation into whether its CEO was targeted by a Chinese intelligence operation. Top executive Jensen Huang admitted to an affair following a reported relationship with an executive at Singapore-based data center company Megaspeed whom the U.S. government believes is a Chinese spy.

Virkkunen did not detail whether she considered Nvidia less trustworthy since news of the spy scandal broke. When asked who she considers trusted partners, she described the U.S. as the EU’s traditionally “closest partner when it comes to security and technology,” suggesting the bloc has no intention of blaming the U.S. but would prefer to collaborate to plug the security gap.

In “limited areas of technologies,” it is important to ensure that “we don’t have that kind of technological leakages,” the EU tech chief said. “We want to really keep the business secrets in Europe.”

Europe is heavily reliant on Nvidia chips, since it has little production or design capacity for AI chips of its own — something that the EU aims to correct for through an industrial policy push into chipmaking called the European Chips Act.

“It’s true that currently Europe is very dependent on AI chips on a few American companies and that’s why it’s important also that we are building up our own capacity to also design and also manufacture more advanced [chips] and also AI chips in the coming years,” Virkkunen said.

Nvidia did not immediately respond to a request for comment.