Downing Street pitches forum on July 18 after PM Sunak rules out spring election.
March 19, 2024 5:34 pm CET
LONDON — Britain has finally set a date for the next European Political Community (EPC) summit after a drawn-out process that frustrated diplomats.
The intergovernmental forum, which debates Europe’s political and strategic future, has been scheduled for July 18 at Blenheim Palace, the stately Oxfordshire birthplace of World War II U.K. Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
The delay in setting the date for this year’s initial instalment of the biannual 47-country forum, which was proposed by French President Emmanuel Macron in 2022, had caused irritation across Europe, as it was meant to be held in the first half of the year. Diplomats suspected the holdup was due to British PM Rishi Sunak’s not wanting to rule out the option of holding a spring election.
But confirmation came today after Sunak ruled out sending the nation to the polls early in May, with the prospect of a fall election growing steadily more likely.
Downing Street hailed the role of the summit in uniting support for Ukraine and in addressing illegal migration, which had proved divisive at previous EPC summits.
“I am delighted that the UK will host the next European Political Community meeting at the historic Blenheim Palace,” Sunak said. “It is an important forum for cooperation across the whole of Europe on the issues that are affecting us all, threatening our security and prosperity.
“From putting our full support behind Ukraine to stopping the scourge of people smuggling and illegal migration, under the U.K.’s leadership the meeting will bring together our European friends, partners, and neighbours to address our shared challenges.”
Delay baffled diplomats
No. 10 will be hoping its tardiness doesn’t result in a poor turnout. Some 44 European leaders attended the inaugural EPC summit in Prague in October 2022, while 45 partook in the Moldova forum in June 2023 and 45 again visited the October 2023 summit in Spain.
Downing Street said “around 50” leaders would attend the U.K. event.
Officials picked July after running out of diary space to arrange a forum between January and June, the six-month period when the U.K. leads the EPC. But that date now overlaps with Hungary’s leadership of the EPC in the second half of the year, when it is due to hold its own summit.
Diplomats from European countries have been demanding clarity for months; a U.K. government official told POLITICO the Foreign Office had been pressing No. 10 about the importance of setting a date.
Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform think tank, said in February he believed Downing Street was “divided on what to do,” and reported that French officials were “quite pissed off about the British noncommittal to a date.”
Another European diplomat previously said their colleagues found the delay “bizarre,” given that Sunak “could use this as a symbol of soft power and leadership.”