Live broadcast | European political leaders gathered in Spain, Zelenskyi also participated

Policy|Live broadcast

Europeans political leaders will gather for two days starting Thursday in Granada, Spain, where they will seek to piece together the geopolitical puzzle at a time of global political tension. The pieces are not expected to fall into place this week, but it is only a matter of sketching and feeling.

On Thursday, the European political community will meet in Granada, which has previously been described as, among other things, a high-level discussion club. In addition to the political leaders of the 27 EU member states, representatives from 20 other countries have also been invited to the meeting.

President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyi told on Thursday morning in the message service X (formerly Twitter) that he had arrived in Granada for a meeting.

The political community was initiated by France and is meeting for the third time. The most important permanent gift in the meetings has been fostering a dialogue connection between the EU and its partners. It has value in a situation where Russia wants to maintain its own sphere of influence also on the western side of its borders.

“From the point of view of the EU’s geopolitical interests, the focus is on intensifying the cooperation and dialogue with the candidate and partner countries in the immediate vicinity”, says the memorandum drawn up by the Government Chancellery and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs about the meeting.

Thursday during the break from the actual meeting, member countries also have the opportunity to look for solutions to tensions and crisis situations between different countries.

It was also expected that the president of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev and Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan could be brought to the same table in a meeting with the president of the European Council Charles Michelinof the French President Emmanuel Macron and the German Chancellor By Olaf Scholz with. However, on Wednesday, Azerbaijan’s state news agency Apa told, that Aliyev is going to skip the meeting. So does the president of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is canceling its participation in the meeting, including the news agency Bloomberg news on Wednesday.

Finland will be represented at the meeting by Prime Minister Petteri Orpo. When he went to the meeting, he described the cancellation of the talks between Azerbaijan and Armenia as a disappointment.

Azerbaijan took control of the Nagorno-Karabakh region with a quick military operation last month. From Armenia’s point of view, this proved useless the country’s membership in the Russian-led Collective Security Organization (CSTO), as Russia did not come to Armenia’s aid.

The situation has therefore left a fertile ground for exploring whether Armenia would be ready to ditch its old intentions to get closer to the EU.

Certainly far-reaching cooperation with Armenia would still not be simple, because Armenia is also economically dependent on Russia. In the long-term rapprochement with the EU, the country would have to rethink its membership in both the Collective Security Organization and the Eurasian Economic Union.

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The political community was initiated by France and is meeting for the third time.

Geopolitics and the tensions of world politics color the discussions in Granada also on Friday, when the political leaders of the EU are gathered for an informal summit.

The EU’s expansion intentions became big news in September, when the president of the Commission Ursula von der Leyen presented his own vision of an EU of more than 30 member states and more than half a billion inhabitants.

On Tuesday, also the Prime Minister of Finland Petteri Orpo (kok) brought up the expansion of the Union in his press conference in Finland before the Granada meetings.

“It is a geopolitical necessity that the EU expands,” Orpo said.

He continued that the countries of Eastern Europe and the Western Balkans, which want to become EU members, threaten to drift into the sphere of influence of Russia and China, if a credible and decent process in the matter is not carried out.

The realization of von der Leyen’s vision would inevitably mean a redistribution of power and money and the need to renew decision-making in the Union. For example, the need to increase qualified majority decisions has emerged in a situation where Hungary alone has repeatedly caused friction in decisions related to supporting Ukraine.

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“It is a geopolitical necessity that the EU expands,” Orpo said.

On Friday the political leaders are supposed to begin to outline the so-called strategic program more broadly. This is about the fact that the EU elections are approaching and the summits of the political leaders of the member states outline the direction of the EU policy for other institutions.

For this reason, the future of the green transition, the competitiveness of the EU and the important state support policy for Finland, as well as the EU’s trade agreements, partnerships and defense strengthening will also be key issues at the meeting.

Among current topics, the EU’s immigration policy in particular is expected to become important.

Finland is represented at the meetings by Prime Minister Orpo, who on Wednesday applied for momentum to the Granada meetings from Paris. There he met the President of France Emmanuel Macron.

Macron’s views on the direction of the Union are currently even more interesting than usual, because the disunity of the German government has also been reflected in the partial waning of German power in the Union.