Morning Brussels. Angela Skujins here guiding you through your Wednesday.
The big topics driving the day: Exploring whether Polish-Ukrainian relations can recover before the upcoming Ukraine Recovery Conference, and a Taliban wash-up, with European Commissioner Magnus Brunner expected to answer serious questions.
Up first: Kyiv-Warsaw bristle. After several days of speculation, Ukraine finally confirmed who from the country’s senior political elite will be present for the Ukraine Recovery Conference on 25–26 June in Gdańsk, Poland.
This is a key event in Europe’s political agenda aimed at drumming up support for the country’s reconstruction process when and if Russia’s full-scale invasion ends.
But the event in its grandiosity has almost been eclipsed by the bitter fighting between the capitals regarding a medal, the renaming of a military unit and a significant amount of history.
As Sasha Vakulina writes in to report, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will not be in attendance, with Prime Minister Yuliia Svyrydenko leading the delegation instead. She has signalled a deliberate shift in tone, emphasising business outcomes over political tensions as relations between Warsaw and Kyiv have deteriorated in recent days.
Brussels, however, is not the only city watching to see how the feuding unfolds, Jorge Liboreiro reports.
“There is only one happy observer in this type of situation, and that’s the aggressor in Ukraine, so we shouldn’t be playing into their hands,” said the European Commission’s chief spokesperson Paula Pinho
Also happening today: German Chancellor Friedrich Merz will host French President Emmanuel Macron, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk in Berlin to discuss future security guarantees for Ukraine.
They will also follow-up from the G7 summit last week in France, where the United States voiced renewed determination to reimpose sanctions on Russia.
Merz has positioned Germany as the third co-chair of the Coalition of the Willing, a role that might increase in importance after Starmer’s recently announced departure. European officials are still trying to figure how his likely successor, Andy Burnham, will conduct his foreign policy.
Flown the coop. As my colleagues Vincenzo Genovese and Jorge reported yesterday, EU officials and Taliban representatives met in Brussels to discuss the return of Afghan nationals. The move comes amid fresh attempts to ramp up repatriations of migrants more broadly that do not have the right to stay in Europe.
Details of the meeting, such as the time and venue, were not disclosed, a move sharply criticised by progressive lawmakers and civil society organisations.
Groups such as Amnesty International were particularly up in arms that the EU executive was liaising with an authoritarian regime that regularly violates human rights. According to a United Nations report, around 21.9 million people — approximately 45% of the population — are projected to require humanitarian assistance this year.
Millions live in poverty and do not have access to education, particularly women and girls. “Afghanistan is a graveyard for human rights,” UN Human Rights Chief Volker Türk said.
The discussion in Brussels focused on the return of irregular Afghan migrants “who have committed serious crimes or pose a security threat”, a Commission spokesperson said in a statement.
But as Vincenzo writes, there is no data showing how many irregular Afghans are responsible for serious crimes or pose a security threat across Europe.
Compounding this is the invitation the Commission sent the Taliban, seen by Euronews, that only mentions the return of “Afghan nationals with no right to stay in the EU”.
The European Commissioner for Migration, Magnus Brunner, will deliver an afternoon press conference today on strengthening Europol. My Euronews colleagues are poised to put the official under the microscope and ask further questions.
How Israel became a test case for the EU’s institutional battle over foreign policy
Israel is increasingly becoming a flashpoint for clashes over who dictates the EU’s foreign policy between the bloc’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, and the rest of the Commission, undermining its overall coherence. On Monday, Euronews revealed that Dubravka Šuica, the European Commissioner for the Mediterranean, was travelling to Israel.
The Commission’s spokesperson later said the trip had been long in the making, but it had not been announced on the Commissioner’s dedicated webpage, and caught several European capitals off guard.
Chief spokesperson Paula Pinho could not explain why the trip had not been properly communicated, saying only that “they will look into that.”
The trip came right after Israel’s foreign minister, Gideon Sa’ar, severed all contact with Kallas, following media reports alleging she had compared the country to apartheid-era South Africa.
The trip had indeed been planned before that row erupted, but Kallas’ team questioned the timing of the visit, given what had happened just days before and conveyed the importance of staying united, Euronews can confirm.
During a press point on Monday, Sa’ar effectively took a swipe at Kallas, prompting several EU diplomats to reproach Šuica for not sticking up to defend her colleague.
“What a fine display of ‘solidarity and coordination’ in the EU,” Josep Borrell, the previous EU foreign policy chief, wrote on X. Borrell, who preceded Kallas in his post, clashed multiple times with von der Leyen over Israel.
Read more of this story by Luca Bertuzzi and me here.
More from our newsrooms
Spain sounds the alarm on the future of EU green cash
Ahead of an environment ministers’ meeting in Brussels, Madrid has warned that the EU risks undermining its credibility on climate and biodiversity unless it protects dedicated funding tools that have delivered environmental results for more than three decades. Marta Pacheco gets into the weeds.
Czech president appeals to Constitutional court amid clash over NATO summit
The president of the Czech Republic, Petr Pavel, has appealed to the country’s Constitutional court amid a dispute over his participation in the upcoming NATO summit in Ankara. Nathan Rennolds has more.
European Parliament backs long-awaited digital euro to reduce US dominance in payments
The digital currency is expected to launch by 2029, in a push to bolster European autonomy in payments away from the dominance of the US dollar. Eleonora Vasques gets into the splash for digital cash.
We’re also keeping an eye on
- European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen receives the President of Benin Romuald Wadagni in Brussels at 2pm.
- European Commissioners Valdis Dombrovskis and Wopke Hoekstra will deliver a press conference on simplifying taxation and energy production legislation in the afternoon from Brussels.
That’s it for today. Sasha Vakulina, Jorge Liboreiro and Vincenzo Genovese contributed to this newsletter.