Where a prime minister or president spends their morning on the day of a European Council summit can say a lot.
You don’t want to sleep in and miss any of the political deal-making that happens over breakfast, before all 27 national leaders have even sat down together in the same room.
In recent European Union (EU) summits, a bloc of leaders pushing for tougher migration policies has begun meeting privately before formal talks begin. Led by the prime ministers of Italy, Denmark and the Netherlands, the group has swollen to 14 members – among them Germany’s chancellor, Friedrich Merz.
“It’s a pressure group that wants to put proposals on the table to make the EU’s migration policy much stricter, which I think is necessary,” Belgium’s hard right prime minister, Bart de Wever, said of the pre-summit meetings on migration.
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Jokingly referred to as the “friends of borders” group, the coalition of states has successfully pushed EU asylum policy rightward over the last year.
Decisions taken by leaders at European Council summits set the direction of travel for the union. On Thursday they will weigh up a controversial plan to use frozen Russian central bank assets to finance a massive €140 billion loan to Ukraine.
Ireland always joins a pre-summit meeting that includes the Nordic and Baltic States, plus Poland. Each leader takes it in turn to play host and this time it falls to Taoiseach Micheál Martin. I’m told the spread put out will include Barry’s Tea, Irish biscuits, brack, Kerrygold butter and fruit.
The meeting will be held in Ireland’s delegation room in the Europa Building, several floors up from the one where all 27 leaders meet for the actual summit.
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Once, Ireland swam in the slipstream of the UK for many EU policy debates. Since Brexit, it has since had to find new friends in Brussels. Joining the Nordic-Baltic group has been part of that effort to forge political alliances.
Merz attended the group’s meeting for the first time before an EU summit in June, adding further weight to the influence of the breakfast.
The meetings last about half an hour and are usually an informal discussion without any set agenda. Defence and the Ukraine war will always be burning political issues for Polish prime minister Donald Tusk and the leaders of the Nordic and Baltic States, a topic where Ireland is not as comfortable.
It might not be well known, but defence co-operation at official level has quietly increased behind the scenes. Irish officials attended a meeting in London with their Nordic and Baltic counterparts earlier this month, to talk about Russia’s “shadow fleet” of poorly maintained vessels, used to evade economic sanctions on its oil exports. Ireland participated in the meeting in an “observer capacity”, a Department of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman said.
It was former taoiseach Leo Varadkar who started attending the meetings of Nordic and Baltic leaders before EU summits. Privately, he told advisers he saw it as a good way for Ireland and other like-minded smaller states to offset the sway of France and Germany.
Ireland needed allies around the table during the twisting Brexit negotiations too. It helps that the Nordics share the Irish government’s pro-business outlook and are also net contributors to the EU budget.
By the time Tusk may be mulling whether he’d like to sample a cup of Barry’s on Thursday morning, the Polish prime minister could be at his third prw-summit do, coming from the earlier meeting of migration hardliners.
Before that the European People’s Party (EPP), the centre-right group that includes Fine Gael, host their own breakfast in the nearby Sofitel hotel, where up to a dozen prime ministers and presidents mill about together. Merz, a conservative, is of course among those invited, as is Tusk, another big beast of the EPP group.
The other political groupings – the centre left Socialists and Democrats and French president Emmanuel Macron’s centrist group Renew, which includes Fianna Fáil – host their own “pre-summit” breakfasts. National leaders are a rarer sight at both, but Martin has promised to turn up to the Renew meeting.
Manfred Weber, the senior German MEP who serves as EPP president, has tried to make the group’s breakfasts more than an informal catch up of centre-right leaders. He has been co-ordinating joint statements of EPP-aligned leaders before EU summits, to stake out a group position on the big issues of the day.
European politics never runs smoothly along the lines of political leanings, though. National interests, geography, election promises and coalition commitments back home can be more important considerations to a leader on a given topic.
For all the best-laid plans and pre-summit scheming, when the 27 leaders sit down around the table together, without their officials or advisers, anything can happen.
