Prime Minister Rutte, an enthusiastic supporter of the ideas that President Macron put on the table in early May, sees ‘the relationship between our part of the world and China/Russia’, migration and current economic issues as suitable topics for discussion, he said this afternoon after a meeting of the two countries. European Union Summit in Brussels. He hopes the new platform can replace regular consultations with eastern partners, such as Ukraine, and with Balkan countries. “Now we are talking to them about EU expansion, but they have to leave the house if there are very substantive discussions. I understand their frustration,” the prime minister said.

President Macron is pleased that there is a “very broad consensus” to give the new union a chance. It will be an ‘open platform based on geography and values’, which could include countries ‘from Ukraine to Iceland’. He and Council President Charles Michel underlined that the new union would be ‘not an alternative to expansion’, but a platform that offers space for EU and non-EU countries for political dialogue and closer ties. Macron has previously suggested that the UK is welcome too. The structure gradually took shape on its own, he believed. It has been established that the new union will only meet at the highest level (‘leaders only’).

The idea of ​​political unions is not entirely new. Macron’s predecessor, François Mitterrand, suggested it soon after the fall of the Wall, but then it didn’t work, according to some because Mitterrand – at other times – had also planned a place for Russia.