A query that was first (not) posed within the rotary-phone period stays unanswered within the age of Zoom. The time for Europe to place ahead a single interlocutor for the skin world has come. Quickly, beneath as-yet-unclear circumstances, peace talks over the struggle in Ukraine could happen. Given what’s at stake, Europe desperately—and justifiably—needs a seat on the desk.
However to be included it must put somebody up who can stand for photo-ops with Vladimir Putin (representing the pursuits of his despotic Russian regime) and Donald Trump (representing these of Donald Trump), and maybe Volodymyr Zelensky (Ukraine). Understanding who can’t sit within the European chair, within the eyes of some faction or different, is straightforward. Arising with the title of somebody who may is hard.
With 40-odd nations that seldom agree on a lot, the standard reply is for Europe to ship a number of folks to characterize its pursuits. That won’t be an possibility this time. For higher or for worse (largely for worse), Mr Trump is the guiding pressure of the talks, the early throes of which have began—with none enter or illustration from Ukraine and Europe—in Saudi Arabia. If he chooses to incorporate Europe in any respect, he’s unlikely to provide it a couple of seat on the desk. Ukraine has requested Europe to discover a single title, however stopped wanting saying who it is likely to be.
The least contentious reply is likely to be to show to the highest brass of the European Union. One among its “presidents” (there are a lot of), that of the European Council, is supposed to characterize the EU at head-of-state degree. However nominating António Costa, the newish incumbent, would isolate Britain, a significant supply of Ukrainian help whose views may hardly be represented by an EU grandee. A former Portuguese prime minister, Mr Costa is a backroom operator by nature. Taking up the envoy job would hinder his day-job chairing conferences of EU leaders, an emergency one in every of which is deliberate for March sixth.
It doesn’t assist that Trumpians maintain the EU establishments in contempt, considering them a supranational deep-state blob ripe for DOGE. This additionally guidelines out Ursula von der Leyen, one other EU president (of the European Fee).
An apparent candidate for the Euro-mantle could be one in every of its nationwide leaders. As soon as the job would have fallen to Angela Merkel, chancellor of Europe’s richest nation and dealer of its thorniest compromises for over a decade. However it should take months for her possible successor, Friedrich Merz, to cobble collectively a coalition after elections on February twenty third, and he has heaps on his plate.
Europe’s next-biggest nation is France. Emmanuel Macron has a robust declare to the Mr Europe job. He handled Mr Trump throughout his first time period and, in a gathering with him on the White Home on February twenty fourth, confirmed there was a good rapport. Like Russia and America, France is a nuclear-armed energy with a everlasting seat on the UN Safety Council. Mr Macron’s imaginative and prescient that Europe wants “strategic autonomy”, ie, from America, appears prescient given latest occasions. Political chaos at residence paradoxically provides Mr Macron extra time to deal with international affairs.
His main flaw is that hawks in northern and central Europe don’t belief him a lot, least of all on Russia, with which he needed to open a “strategic dialogue” on safety earlier than 2022. Mr Macron has made efforts to have interaction these nations, and has at occasions sounded simply as hawkish as them—for instance by being among the many first to recommend that European troops ought to be despatched to Ukraine.
Those that oppose Mr Macron would possibly plump for Donald Tusk, Poland’s prime minister and former president of the European Council. His nation grasps the Russian risk acutely; it spends essentially the most (as a share of GDP) on defence of any NATO nation, which performs effectively with Trumpians. However Poland has dominated out sending troops to Ukraine, and has a typically tetchy relationship with its management. Mr Tusk unwisely disparaged Mr Trump whereas he was out of workplace. He shares foreign-policy oversight with the Polish president, who will probably be changed in June and won’t share Mr Tusk’s views. The Pole has the alternative drawback to Mr Macron’s: western Europeans don’t need to give their most hawkish member carte blanche to behave on their behalf.
What of different big-country leaders? Spain is way from Ukraine and its prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, just isn’t amongst its most vocal supporters. Sir Keir Starmer thinks Britain could be a “bridge” with America, however Brexit has left it remoted in Europe. Giorgia Meloni is an ideological ally of the American president. However she has but to resolve the right way to be each pro-Ukraine and pro-Trump. Sending a revered chief from a smaller nation, like Petr Pavel, a retired normal turned Czech president, would as soon as have been a typical Euro-compromise. Mr Trump would little doubt begin proceedings by belittling the consensus decide. (“Who is that this man anyway?”)
Come up, Mr Europe
Mr Macron seems the good choice. He needs the job, and has convened teams of European leaders in Paris already. He made some extent of consulting his fellow bigwigs extensively forward of his three-hour chat with Mr Trump this week. These not sure of his geopolitical instincts may recommend underlings to stability them out.
Kaja Kallas, the hawkish Estonian who heads the EU’s foreign-policy arm, would make a wonderful consultant going through the American secretary of state in preparatory talks, say. It’s a part of Europe’s historical past and its allure that it can not simply put ahead one particular person to behave for all. However that’s the type of luxurious that comes from being primarily a smooth energy, and these are hard-power occasions.
Europeans should perceive that having a single envoy on the negotiating desk who flusters some is healthier than squabbling far-off from it.
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