At the EU summit in Brussels, the conclusions on Ukraine were approved by 26 member states and not by 27 like the text on Defense. The support of Hungary's Prime Minister Victor Orban was lacking.
Five “conditions” for peace emerged from the summit. Namely:
- Ukraine must also participate in the negotiations
- Europe must also be involved in the negotiations
- The ceasefire must be part of a process leading to a comprehensive peace agreement.
- Reaching an agreement must be accompanied by solid security guarantees for Ukraine that will deter future aggression by Russia.
- Peace agreements must respect the independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine.
In a brief press briefing on the sidelines of the proceedings, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni summarized the Italian position as follows: no to cohesion funds to be allocated to armaments, yes to the extension to Ukraine of Article 5 of NATO (which provides for the mutual commitment of the parties of the Alliance to consider an armed attack against one or more of them as an attack directed against all of them) . And in this context, the Prime Minister relaunched Italy's commitment to a US-EU summit , even if at the moment there is nothing concrete.
Meloni essentially reiterated the line already expressed at the informal summit in London: there is no European defense without full involvement of NATO. A position objectively distant from that of Emmanuel Macron, who proposed a European atomic umbrella under the aegis of France . Rome instead proposed that all the planned funds be allocated to expenses eligible for calculation within NATO.
(Unioneonline/lf)
