“It is already a tour de force to manage to bring together 44 leaders in the midst of war against Russia”, estimated Sébastien Maillard, director of the Jacques Delors Institute as the European Political Community (EPC) holds its first meeting on Thursday 6 October in Prague, the Czech capital. In a speech delivered in Strasbourg (Bas-Rhin), Emmanuel Macron had called in May for the creation of a CPE to welcome Ukraine in particular and to “finding a new space for political cooperation”. The CPE welcomes the countries of the European Union plus 17 countries including Turkey, Switzerland and Serbia. Ukraine will also be represented. Countries “are indeed very far from the democratic canons, it makes a very disparate whole and it is a bit the limit of the exercise”admits Sébastien Maillard.
franceinfo: What will the CPE be used for?
Sebastien Maillard: This is the challenge of this summit and it is already a tour de force to manage to bring together 44 leaders in the midst of war against Russia. The photo will be very symbolic. The question is: what do we do once this photo is taken and everyone goes home? Cooperation projects to interconnect our various electricity and telecommunications networks, to have a real space of interconnections, this requires funding and also to move forward concretely once the summit is over. There will be a lot of work to do if we want this CPE to not just be a symbolic highlight in Prague, but really have a concrete translation.
How were the countries chosen?
When Emmanuel Macron launched this idea, on May 9 in Strasbourg, it had a continental aim. But it was really born from the membership applications of Ukraine, Moldova and even Georgia to see how, between the countries of the European Union and the candidate countries or the potential candidate countries, we could already have a space for dialogue and cooperation. The Head of State had also mentioned the United Kingdom to try to bring them back into play. There was the question of Turkey. We didn’t even know if she was really going to want to come or not. Having countries of different sizes, some even pro-Russian, I’m thinking of Serbia, others which are actually very far from democratic canons, that makes for a very disparate whole and that’s a bit of the limit of the exercise. It certainly means wanting to create a space for practical cooperation and political dialogue, but without really having a common democratic base. But for the time being, it is still a success to manage to unite the entire continent to show that there are not only Westerners on one side and the rest of the world on the other, but that the continent has much to share together.
“Perhaps through this joint work, we can hope that democratic values will spread a little more.”
Sébastien Maillard, director of the Jacques Delors Instituteat franceinfo
What are the short term goals?
A good sign is that we are already talking about the next summit. There are several countries, including Moldova, which had offered to host the next summit. So it shows that countries that are not part of the European Union still want to have a place to meet. But the place of the European Union is going to be a key question for the future of this EPC since even if it is a question of putting all the countries in the European Union and outside it on an equal footing, the European Union will have plays a leading role. It is a way for her to exert a certain influence on the rest of the continent.