Opinion
Europe has one seat at the table. It must speak with one voice.
Russia, Ukraine and the United States meet in Abu Dhabi over Ukraine's post-war order. Our leverage, from sanctions to reconstruction, sits in Brussels, so EU leaders in Dublin must agree on one negotiator with a written mandate.
The union was built so that Europe's fate would not be settled without Europe in the room. On Monday, Ursula von der Leyen said the EU will be present at the Abu Dhabi talks alongside its partners. Seventy years on, Russia, Ukraine and the United States meet in Abu Dhabi on 10 and 11 November over Ukraine's post-war order, and whether we sit inside the room is still a quarrel. That is the verdict to sit with. Occupy it together, or watch others hand out our security in our absence.
Right now the seat is half ours and half an argument. The Commission and Council have sent Bjoern Seibert and Anna-Maria Boura, opening the way to direct engagement with the Russian delegation for the first time in these talks. Moscow answers in the open: Grigory Karasin, a senior Russian parliamentarian on foreign affairs, calls Paris's plans wishful thinking, and Maria Zakharova, the Russian foreign ministry spokesperson, says European countries have no place at the table. Their price is open for all to see. The real damage is ours. EU leaders are at loggerheads over who represents Europe, the format keeps changing, and one EU official says our representatives will not be inside the room. Now the objection from our own side: Polish foreign minister Radosław Sikorski warns the last thing wanted is Western Europe dealing with Russia over the heads of Eastern Europe, and many voices feel safer than one. But a divided table is exactly what lets Washington and Moscow deal over everybody's head. The answer is one negotiator bound to a written mandate, passed by majority, that names the East's red lines: no recognition of occupied land, and no limits on Ukraine's army, which Zelensky said on 25 October are not up for discussion.
On 13 November, in Dublin, the answer.
By then, one seat means leverage, because the levers sit in Brussels. Sanctions, frozen Russian assets, reconstruction money and Ukraine's path to membership are decisions of the European institutions, as Kaja Kallas has argued, and she has said it plainly: any agreement we are not party to, we will not implement. A single European negotiator turns those levers into a position at the table. And we are not arriving empty-handed: from 9 to 22 November, 2,800 troops from 11 countries, led by France and Britain, are exercising in Poland to test the very guarantees a settlement would rest on. The veto over the deal's terms runs through our institutions. One voice in Abu Dhabi makes that strength count. A quarrel about formats wastes it.
The EU leaders meeting in Ireland on 13 November, where Giorgia Meloni has forced EU representation onto the agenda out of sheer frustration at the meeting-count, must agree on one European chief negotiator, empowered by majority vote, to speak for the union and its members in every round that follows Abu Dhabi. The mandate itself is the assurance every capital, East and West, can hold to: it names the levers only the union controls. Europeans are not guests at a table others set. You have already met that strength, the levers and the troops. Ask your government this week to back that one voice when the leaders sit down in Ireland.