With 5,000 agents deployed throughout the city, it was evident that something important was going to happen these days in Granada. The terminology of European institutions and summits is always complicated, and this time more so, because what landed yesterday in Granada is what could be called an unidentified political object: the European Political Community (EPC).
Yesterday, Spain hosted the third summit of a project yet to be consolidated from the imagination of Emmanuel Macron a few months after the start of the war in Ukraine. Its objective is to bring together all European countries in the same forum to talk about the security of the continent and highlight Russia's isolation. A year after its launch, with a first summit in Prague and another six months later in Moldova, a few kilometers from Ukraine, the format has shown its limitations.
The great success of the first meeting was the holding of talks between the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan under the auspices of France, Germany and the EU, instead of Moscow. A year later, tens of thousands of Armenians have fled the military operation launched by Baku in the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave, described as “ethnic cleansing” by Armenia. The EU hoped that the presence of the leaders of both countries in Grenada would pave the way to peace and, in the process, demonstrate the usefulness of the CPE, but a few hours before the meeting, the Azerbaijani leader, Ilham Aliyev, and his great ally, the Turkish Recep Tayyip Erdogan, canceled the trip.
The feeling of emptiness increased yesterday mid-morning with the decision of the Moncloa to cancel the announced press conference with the acting president of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, together with the host of the previous summit, the Moldovan president Maia Sandu, and the leader of the country that will host the next event, the British Rishi Sunak. Several European diplomats expressed their surprise at the Spanish decision. Government sources attributed it to Sunak's inability to appear before the press with Sánchez, while from the British side disagreements with the Spanish presidency were admitted over the agenda of the meeting.
For London, a fundamental issue to discuss in these meetings is immigration, and given that Spain had not organized an ad hoc table (the leaders, more than 40, work in groups), Sunak convened his own conclave with the leaders of France, Italy and Albania, among others. The British Government wants to take advantage of the 2024 summit to make changes to the way this strange political artifact works. “The important thing here is the informal meetings between leaders,” said the president of the European Council, Charles Michel, before leaving for the gala dinner organized by the Government in the Alhambra.
