If Europe is expected to pick up the bill at the end of the lunch, it should have a seat at the table and a say over what was chosen from the menu.
That was the typically colourful take of Luxembourg’s foreign minister Xavier Bettel when asked whether he thought the European Union should resume dialogue with Moscow to talk about bringing an end to the war in Ukraine.
It is a question European leaders and their governments have increasingly been mulling, in both private discussions and public commentary.
Moscow was frozen out diplomatically after Vladimir Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The ongoing peace talks between Ukraine and Russia, brokered by the United States, have not included input from European powers.
Europe plays a crucial role in keeping Ukraine financed, even more so since the Trump administration cut off aid a year ago. It will be expected to do the heavy lifting in any postwar reconstruction project, and the UK and France have promised troops to help guarantee a truce holds.
Given all the skin they have in the game, European leaders feel frustrated at being cut out of the negotiations.
French president Emmanuel Macron in particular has spoken about the EU reopening a line of communication to Moscow, to become more involved in the stop-start talks.
Belgium’s prime minister Bart De Wever has gone a step further. The right-wing nationalist suggested normalising relations to turn back on the tap that supplied Europe with Russian oil and gas.
Agreeing a peace settlement and regaining access to cheap Russian energy was “common sense”, De Wever told Belgian newspaper L’Echo at the weekend.
“In private European leaders agree with me, but no one dares to say it out loud. We must end the conflict in the interest of Europe, without being naive towards Putin,” he said.
The US and Israel’s war in Iran has put real pressure on European governments to do something about spiking energy prices.
Less than a 10th of the oil and gas supplied to the EU travels through the Strait of Hormuz. However, the shock from Iran shutting off the shipping choke point has driven up prices across the world, regardless of where the oil is coming from.
The EU has spent the last four years weaning itself off a dependence on Moscow for cheap energy, a process that involved substantial short-term pain, where runaway inflation fuelled a cost-of-living crisis.
Dan Jorgensen, European commissioner for energy, said the union’s executive body was not about to reverse that necessary change, which has seen EU states move to renewable energy and US liquefied natural gas.
“We have been, for too long, dependent on energy from Russia, making it possible for Putin to blackmail us,” he said on Monday.
Lithuanian foreign minister Kestutis Budrys said there was “nothing more expensive than cheap Russian oil”. Speaking to reporters in Brussels, he said a loss of political autonomy was the real price.
Even if this short-term energy shock turns into a prolonged crisis, it would be difficult to imagine many European leaders turning to Moscow to bail them out.
There is a bit of momentum behind the push to start talking to Putin again, where it concerns the terms of a peace deal in Ukraine. Trump’s willingness to do so undermined the policy of freezing the Russian leader out.
Bettel, who was Luxembourg’s prime minister at the start of the war, said “normalisation” of EU-Russia relations was a non-starter, but dialogue was different. “Everybody is talking except us,” the foreign minister said.