European political community meets for the first time in Prague

More than forty leaders gathered at Prague Castle in the Czech Republic, on Thursday, October 6, for the first meeting of the European Political Community, which was followed on Friday by an informal summit of the 27 EU countries. At Friday’s conference the Prime Minister of the Czech Republic, Fiala, said that the topics discussed included aid to Ukraine and energy prices. He believes there has been a shift and says that “quite taboo” issues within the EU have been opened up for discussion. In particular, he mentioned the decoupling of gas prices from electricity prices and the different treatment of emission allowances. However, the Prime Minister admitted that there were different views on this within the EU.

The European Political Community is a new platform. The Czech Republic is organising its meeting in agreement with the previous French presidency, whose President Emmanuel Macron initiated the creation of the group to discuss cooperation with non-EU countries. In addition to the EU heads of state, 20 other heads of state, at the level of prime ministers or presidents, also attended the Prague meeting. Among them were British Ex-prime Minister Liz Truss, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and leaders of the Balkan and post-Soviet countries. Russia and Belarus were not invited. As Czech MEP Dita Charanzová said about closer cooperation with countries outside the EU: “This is nothing more than a reflection on how the EU could establish closer cooperation with several countries, be it the UK, Norway or Switzerland, even in this difficult situation where we have a war in Ukraine. Of course, Ukraine or Turkey are also part of this.”