As part of the new platform, proposed in June by French President Emmanuel Macron, the leaders of European countries will gather to debate key issues concerning the European continent. The energy crisis, the war in Ukraine, migration, climate challenges – today’s negotiations are focused on these points.

“I believe that this is also the beginning of a new level of cooperation between European countries within the framework of the EPC,” Prime Minister Petr Fiala said at Wednesday’s conference on the largest concentration of world leaders on Czech soil to date. “I believe that the summit will be, and it actually already is, an excellent advertisement for the Czech Republic and for Prague,” he added.

Štěpán Černý, deputy director of the Section for European Affairs at the Government Office, confirmed to Czech Television that many major states will not miss the meeting. Only Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen will be missing. She called early parliamentary elections on Wednesday after her country found itself in a political crisis over the destruction of Russian gas pipelines on the bottom of the Baltic Sea.

In addition to the 27 EU members, Albania, North Macedonia, Kosovo, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Georgia, Moldova, Ukraine, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Norway, Switzerland, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Great Britain and Turkey also sent their top representatives.

Question marks have long hovered over the presence of newly minted British Prime Minister Liz Truss, who spoke at the Conservative Party’s annual conference in Birmingham on Wednesday and is one of the positions of the clumsiest around tax cuts and the collapse of the library.

“Twice it seemed that domestic difficulties would not let her go to Prague. It has now been confirmed that he will arrive at the meeting, which the island media is writing about as a shadow European Union,” a source from the nearby summit, who wished to remain anonymous, told Práv.

Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal will represent Ukraine. “We expect that President Zelenskyi will address statesmen online,” a source confirmed to Práv.

Representatives of individual countries arrive with many interests – sometimes conflicting. Therefore, there were doubts whether the outcome of the meeting would be much more than a joint photo. According to diplomats, Germany, for example, is skeptical of the action promoted by President Macron, but there are doubts about the “added value” of the summit even among the organizers, the AFP agency reported.

Turkish President Recep Erdogan is currently facing criticism from European countries, which are once again sending migrants out of their territory on a large scale. In addition, Ankara is in a long-standing dispute with Greece and Cyprus, which recently escalated again into a sharp verbal spat between the leaders.

The most tense atmosphere will be between Armenia and Azerbaijan – more than a hundred soldiers were killed in renewed cross-border skirmishes between the two countries in September.

Although a joint statement is not expected at the end of the summit, even the obligatory “family photo” is an output – a message to the world that European countries, even those outside the Union, are finally willing to appear outwardly as one family, according to the Politico website. The meeting on Friday in Prague will be followed by an informal EU summit.

Meeting in Prague in numbers