The leaders will take their crisis diplomacy on the road, from a conference room in Brussels to a castle in the Belgian countryside, and finally to Munich for the world’s biggest international security conference. Plus, MEPs will meet in Strasbourg to discuss unfreezing the EU’s trade deal with the U.S. and approving its long-term budget from 2028 to 2034, while ambassadors from every member country will hold talks in Brussels on Tuesday.
Here’s how the week is set to go down.
Wednesday: EU’s defense chiefs meet
There’s just one item on the agenda when the EU’s defense ministers gather in Brussels for a Foreign Affairs Council: support for Ukraine.
Ukrainian Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov, who was appointed last month after serving as the minister of digital transformation, is set to attend and brief the bloc’s defense chiefs on his country’s “most burning” needs as it approaches the four-year mark of Russia’s full-scale invasion, a European official with knowledge of the meeting told POLITICO. The official was granted anonymity to discuss the sensitive talks.
Fedorov is likely to request additional air defense missile systems, including Patriots and NASAMS, which have long been at the top of Kyiv’s wish list. The meeting will also discuss “cooperation in defense innovation,” which is code for drones and other new military technology.
Wednesday’s meeting should see “Europe urgently thinking about a real Plan B for its own security” as the U.S. increasingly withdraws from the transatlantic alliance, said Fabrice Pothier, CEO of Rasmussen Global, a consultancy. “Europe must be able to stand on its own feet in the event that we are left to stand alone,” he told POLITICO.