This week, the UK hosted the 4th European Political Community Summit at Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire, welcoming 47 political leaders from across Europe to the historic venue. Media discourse has emphasised the symbolism of the decision to choose Blenheim Palace as the summit’s venue, as it happens to be the birthplace of Winston Churchill, who led the Allies against the Nazis to achieve peace in Western Europe. The connection formed a central theme of the summit, which focused on two main areas: peace on the European continent, and the refugee crisis. Starmer also used the summit as an opportunity to discuss the future of relations between the UK and other European nations.
Ukraine and peace in Europe
A central theme of the summit was supporting Ukraine against Russia’s aggression. The first summit was held in October of 2022, 8 months after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, established as a way of showing solidarity against Russian aggression and authoritarian regimes in Europe. As such, leaders from Russia and Belarus have not been invited to any summit.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy gave a speech to the plenary at the opening of the summit. He thanked the European community for their support to Ukraine, in both a practical sense and a moral one. He emphasised the importance of unity in Europe, stating that ‘When the aggressor loses, the world wins’ in a stirring speech that highlighted the suffering of innocent people in Ukraine.
President Zelenskyy was not silent on the alliances between certain attendees and President Putin. Referring to Victor Orbán’s recent visit to Russia, (which happened without consultation of other EU leaders) which Orbán described as a ‘peace mission’, he called it out by saying that ‘truly strong leaders’ would not maintain a positive relationship with President Putin. He thanked the summit for their support in Ukraine’s EU accession journey, which Orbán has been vocally opposed to.
Zelenskyy then turned to the European community as a whole, and urged leaders to convince international leaders to ‘be brave’ against threats and blackmail. In a show of appreciation for their support and encouragement of unity, he reiterated that Putin’s primary objective to ‘create division in Europe’ had failed.
PM Keir Starmer also took the opportunity to project a message of support to Ukraine, repeating and reaffirming past military and financial support to Zelenskyy, as well as supporting Ukraine’s energy. He reiterated the UK’s recent pledge to sanction more of Russia’s ‘shadow fleet’ of oil tankers. Yesterday, Zelenskyy was invited to address the UK cabinet, the first foreign leader this century to do so. Starmer vowed to use his premiership to deepen European cooperation on defence and security.
The refugee crisis
One of the core topics of the summit was the refugee crisis, as Starmer laid out his plans to work together with the rest of Europe to tackle ‘illegal migration’. The most novel argument made by Starmer was that in order to do so, he would not ‘commit taxpayers money to gimmicks’, referring to the now-cancelled Rwanda scheme of Rishi Sunak, but that the problem must be ‘tackled at source’ by investing in the countries of origin. Starmer announced that the new government would allocate £84 million to humanitarian projects in Africa and West Asia, stating that ‘global inequality deserves our attention’. While this humanitarian approach has been welcomed, it remains unclear from his speech exactly how this investment will be used and how likely it is to impact the origin countries of asylum seekers: in 2023, the highest numbers of asylum seekers to the UK came from Afghanistan, a country which faces several severe political, social, and environmental challenges. It seems that the positive effects of this promise may take a long time to be visible.
Turning away from the UK’s foreign policy, Starmer also announced a new border security command that will theoretically work in partnership with European countries. To fulfil this promise, the UK will need to enter into bilateral deals with European partners. Examining the political landscape across the European continent suggests that these agreements may be far on the horizon: after all, many of the right-wing parties successful at the recent EU elections are reluctant to cooperate with other countries on the refugee crisis, and may have a no-tolerance attitude towards asylum seekers.
The future of the UK in Europe
As one of his first international appointments since the beginning of his premiership (after last week’s NATO summit), Keir Starmer and other UK government leaders took the opportunity to clearly outline their attitudes towards the UK’s future relationship with the EU, and ‘reset’ the UK’s relationship to the rest of Europe. Addressing his ‘fellow Europeans’, Starmer confidently stated that under his government, the UK would ‘never withdraw from the ECHR’. This commitment is striking after months of tension between the previous UK government and the ECHR, who repeatedly stopped Rishi Sunak’s Conservative government from sending planes of asylum seekers to Rwanda for breaking their human rights commitments. The language that Starmer used is also in stark contrast to that of Rishi Sunak, who repeatedly described the European Court of Human Rights as a ‘foreign court’ (despite the UK’s power, influence, and representation within the court) and enthusiastically stated his willingness to leave the ECHR if they interfered with domestic policy.
‘Under my leadership, Britain will be a friend and a partner […] not part of the EU but very much part of Europe’.
Foreign Minister David Lammy told Sky News that Keir Starmer was determined to put the UK ‘back at the heart of Europe’.
International reaction to the summit
Firstly, the next summit is to be held this year in Budapest, hosted by Victor Orbán’s government. The European Commission has already announced that it will hold its own summit for foreign ministers in August, to avoid travelling to Budapest for the event hosted by Orbán.
Starmer also met privately with Georgia Meloni, far-right Prime Minister of Italy, who seemed to have areas of agreement according to the conversation on migration overheard on their microphones. When asked by the press, Starmer was non-committal that he would not emulate Italy’s 3rd-country processing policy for asylum seekers: ‘we will look at what works’. Despite the new political direction taken by UK Labour since their election, Starmer has been criticised for echoing his predecessor Rishi Sunak.
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