António Costa calls extraordinary summit for March 6
Just as yet another country in the bloc turns right in legislative elections (away from the left-wing ‘bubble’ of recent times), Portugal’s former Socialist prime minister António Costa has tabled an extraordinary summit of European leaders, in his capacity as president of the European Council.
The meeting will take place on Thursday March 6, and focus solely on the war in Ukraine and defence.
It will come the week after political leaders of France and the United Kingdom will have had their meetings in America with President Trump following the Potus’ own moves towards opening a pathway towards peace between Russia and Ukraine.
These moves – similarly to Donald Trump’s initial ideas for the future of Gaza – have not gone down well, but they have at least galvanized the free world in a way the Biden administration never managed.
“We are living through a decisive moment for Ukraine and for European security”, Mr Costa wrote today over social network ‘X’. “In my consultations with European leaders, I have heard a shared commitment to face the challenges at the EU level: to strengthen European defence and contribute decisively to peace on our continent and long-term security for Ukraine,”
Costa, will be in Kyiv tomorrow to mark the third anniversary of the start of the Russian invasion with other European dignitaries, including president of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen. He added that he will continue to work with von der Leyen, and member states, “to be prepared for decisions on March 6″.
A lot of worrying statements have been bandied about by Donald Trump and his representatives over the last week – and the fact that the first meeting towards the start of negotiations was restricted to teams from Russia and the US, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, has raised many more questions than it answered. Indeed, there have been very few answers all week, beyond the White House’s insistence that Ukraine’s hopes of recovering territory occupied by Russia, and being allowed to join NATO, are “unrealistic”.
Faced with what is seen as an increasingly uncertain geopolitical scenario and degradation of existing diplomatic conventions, the EU is thus keen to strengthen the continent’s defence to avoid depending on the US, writes Lusa.
Also today, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy has shown that he too can throw a few ‘surprises’ into the complexity of ‘negotiations’ with the US. He suggested leaving office in exchange for membership of NATO: “If you need me to leave my post, I’m ready”, he told a press conference in Kyiv.
Ukrainians living in Portugal meantime are on tenterhooks. All over the country, little groups have been holding ‘events’ to mark the third anniversary, keenly aware that ‘everything has changed’ in the last few days, and looks likely to keep changing in the foreseeable future.
In Lagos, the Oranta humanitarian association that has been sending aid to Ukraine since the start of the war, was still doing so today. This evening, two volunteers from the UK arrive in the Algarve to drive the latest buses (donated by Vila do Bispo municipality) across Europe and right up to the fighting. “They won’t go totally to the front line”, Oranta president Roman Grymalyuk tells us. “But very close. We just keep going. We know, we feel, the next two weeks will be very important. I truly thank Donald Trump for finally getting Europe to seem to be moving”, he added. It was a statement that has been echoed through all the blundering diplomacy of recent days: without Donald Trump, Europe would almost certainly not be showing the current signs of pulling itself together.
