And that speech was about as far as it went.
As Tehran pounded its neighbors, disrupting Europe’s energy supplies, Kyiv attacked Russian factories repairing military planes, and Donald Trump in Washington joked about the Pearl Harbor attack alongside the Japanese prime minister, European leaders used their talks to tinker with the bloc’s carbon permit scheme, the Emissions Trading System. It’s not a wholly unrelated matter to the global energy shock, but hardly an issue where the continent could demonstrate its geopolitical might.
On Iran, leaders found they had little leverage or will to make any significant intervention. On Ukraine, more than four years after Russia’s full-scale invasion ― a conflict where they do have leverage and they do have will ― they were unable to overcome internal divisions to approve sending €90 billion Kyiv’s way.
There was “no willingness to get involved across the table” on the Iran conflict, said a senior European government official, granted anonymity like others quoted in this article to discuss the talks behind closed doors.
German Chancellor Merz even complained that focusing on Iran risked shifting attention away from measures to boost Europe’s flagging economy — the summit’s original raison d’être before would affairs got in the way — according to three officials.
“The world looked very different at Alden Biesen,” an EU official said, referring to last month’s competitiveness-focused meeting in a Belgian castle that was meant to set the stage for this summit. That was before Iran’s war and Ukraine’s funding dilemma, brought about by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán going back on his promise to approve the loan, radically reshaped the agenda.