With 5,000 agents deployed throughout the city, it was clear that something important would happen these days in Granada. The terminology of European institutions and summits is always complicated, and this time more so, because what landed in Granada yesterday is what could be called an unidentified political object: the European Political Community (ECP).
Spain was yesterday the host of the third summit of a project that has yet to be consolidated, which emerged from the imagination of Emmanuel Macron a few months after the start of the war in Ukraine. Its aim is to bring together all the European countries in the same forum to talk about the security of the continent and demonstrate 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 enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, described as "ethnic cleansing" by Armenia. The EU aspired to the fact that the presence of the leaders of the two countries in Granada would pave the way to peace and, incidentally, demonstrate the usefulness of the CPE, but a few hours before the meeting, the Azerbaijani leader, Ilham Ali ev, and his great ally, Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdogan, canceled the trip.
The feeling of emptiness increased yesterday mid-morning with Moncloa's decision to cancel the announced press conference with the acting president of the central 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 meeting, the British Rishi Sunak. European diplomats expressed their surprise at the Spanish decision. Government sources attributed it to Sunak's inability to appear in front of the press with Sánchez, while the British admitted discrepancies with the Spanish presidency over the agenda of the meeting.
For London, a fundamental issue to be discussed in these meetings is immigration and, since 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 in the way this strange political artifact works. "The important thing here are the informal meetings between leaders", assured the president of the European Council, Charles Michel, before leaving for the gala dinner organized by the Spanish Government at the Alhambra.
