Ukraine Talks Overshadow AI Summit in Dublin as EU Leaders Agree E5 Team Will Represent the Bloc in Peace Negotiations

European Union leaders have agreed that the so-called E5 format — Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Italy and Poland — plus representatives of the European Commission and the European Council will represent the bloc at any future peace negotiations.

The leaders had come to Dublin for a summit on Friday to discuss artificial intelligence. But they spent most of the meeting grappling with questions about Ukraine — in particular, who should represent Europe in future peace talks.

Despite considerable disagreement over whether representation should rest with a single person or with a group, the leaders eventually reached a compromise. Under that deal, future talks would involve national security officials from Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Italy and Poland, together with representatives from the European Commission and the European Council.

After the summit, European Council President António Costa said, “It is essential to have a team and to speak with one voice,” noting that US President Donald Trump had also tasked two envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, with conducting negotiations.

Ireland, which holds the EU’s rotating presidency, hosted the informal gathering. It had billed the meeting as a rare chance for a high-level discussion on how to develop artificial intelligence in accordance with European values.

A meeting scheduled for next week between the US and Russian leaders has, however, set Europe on edge. Leaders warned of a possible deal brokered between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin in which superpowers would decide European security questions over the heads of the countries directly concerned — reminiscent of the Yalta talks toward the end of World War II, which divided Europe among the four allied powers.

The Trump-Putin meeting is scheduled to take place during an APEC summit in Shenzhen, China, on November 18-19. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said of it: “That is why I want to make our message to the US very clear: Please, no surprises! Continue to play on Team Europe and on the same team as Ukraine. And let’s work together for genuine peace in Ukraine.”

The question of who should represent Europe in future discussions about Ukraine and the post-conflict security order was added to the summit’s agenda at the last minute, following a request from Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.

Earlier in the day, Merz had voiced a preference for a narrower group made up of officials from Berlin, Paris and London, while Kaja Kallas, the EU’s chief diplomat, argued that she was best placed to lead the discussions. “I know that the Russians don’t want me, but do we have a say on who is representing Russia? No, we don’t,” Kallas said. “We have a really strong team,” she went on. “I’m ready to do this work with foreign ministers.”

Over a lunch of baked salmon fillets and crushed Ballymackenny potatoes, the leaders also grappled with how to make AI more “sovereign” — that is, less dependent on US and Chinese technology providers. French President Emmanuel Macron wrote in a post on X, “Our independence cannot be outsourced, it must be built here at home,” and announced that France and the Netherlands would host a meeting of “Tech Creators” on December 2.

Amid a global outage of Microsoft software, which has since been resolved, Mistral chief executive Arthur Mensch urged the leaders to direct some of the roughly €260 billion currently spent on foreign technology toward home-grown tech infrastructure, research and development. While the bloc has solid foundations on which to build AI solutions, Europe needs “speed, financing and a strong coordination between member states,” Mensch said.

But the AI discussion quickly gave ground to existential questions about Ukraine, including how the bloc would finance Kyiv in the coming months and whether Europe would get a seat at the table in upcoming rounds of Ukraine-Russia talks brokered by the US.

Just as leaders, including Ukraine’s president, were gathering in Dublin, Russian President Vladimir Putin said he was open to Europeans joining the talks, reversing Moscow’s previous opposition. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov quickly added qualifications, however, stating that Europeans must first demonstrate “genuine intention and readiness to contribute to the peace process” before being admitted — a condition Kallas quickly dismissed as a “trap.” “If we start to talk about what Russia is asking regarding the security architecture, we actually walk into the traps that Russia is setting us, which is that we divert attention away from that there is no ceasefire,” she told reporters in Dublin.

Other officials said Russia’s preconditions for allowing Europe to join the talks would mean concessions to Moscow’s war demands, namely a withdrawal of NATO from European states bordering Russia, the lifting of sanctions and a ban on foreign troops in Ukraine.