The incredible shrinking summit

It could have been like getting back together with an old flame — but then Moscow ruined the date.

The EU-Latin America summit, the first in eight years, was meant to symbolize a revived relationship. Dozens of leaders from both regions gathered in Brussels over two days to discuss issues from climate change, to trade, to drug violence. In a sign of their renewed ties, they agreed to meet every two years in future.

But haggling over Russia’s war in Ukraine — a geopolitical must for the EU — also exposed their irreconcilable differences.

During weeks of wrangling over the final summit communiqué, drafts went from condemning Russia’s war of aggression “in the strongest possible terms,” to merely expressing “concern.”

The final version published on Tuesday — which had shrunk to 9 pages from 16 pages previously — expressed “deep concern” over the ongoing war against Ukraine. EU officials highlighted the formulation “against Ukraine,” and not “in Ukraine,” as a diplomatic win that identified Russia as the aggressor without directly naming it.

Still, one country — named by several EU officials as Nicaragua — did not endorse the declaration “due to its disagreement with one paragraph.”

The diplomatic trick averted a scenario of the summit ending without any agreed statement at all. To prevent such a geopolitical failure, regional powers such as Argentina and Brazil “put pressure on recalcitrant members,” one European diplomat said.

Still, European leaders struggled to hide their frustration.

“It is important to say that you can’t rewrite history. It is a fact that Russia attacked Ukraine and you can’t contradict that,” Xavier Bettel, prime minister of Luxembourg, said earlier on Tuesday. “Among colleagues, you must stand for the truth.”

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Both Nicaragua and Venezuela had objected to strongly condemning Russia’s war in Ukraine, said five EU officials and diplomats, accusing Russia of exerting pressure on its traditional allies. 

“Moscow is at the table. We can’t be negotiating like this, and then dress in blue and yellow,” said a second diplomat, referring to the colors of the Ukrainian flag.

“Haggling over the summit statement took over the whole thing”, said a third EU diplomat, who like the others was granted anonymity to speak candidly about the closed-door negotiations. “We should have just focused on the leaders getting together instead of having such high expectations.”

While the EU is no stranger to differences among its members, views across the 33-nation Community of the Latin American & the Caribbean States (CELAC) diverge even more widely. While countries like Chile and Mexico lean more to the West, Cuba and Nicaragua’s close ties to Moscow date back to the Soviet era while the late Hugo Chávez brought Venezuela closer to Russia.

“We are very surprised that there are members of our group which oppose any resolution concerning the war in Ukraine. We think it’s a war of aggression,” said Chilean Foreign Minister Alberto Van Klaveren. Reaching a compromise on the statement, he added, looked “very difficult.” 

For once, European Council President Charles Michel is not the one being blamed. His team and the EU’s diplomatic service have been in intensive negotiations with CELAC on the summit takeaways since May.

Some EU diplomats instead pointed the finger at Spain, which recently assumed the rotating presidency of the Council of the EU that represents EU governments. Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has been an advocate of stronger ties with Latin America, but he is also fighting for his political survival in a snap general election this Sunday.

Sánchez, distracted, sneaked out of the gathering on Monday evening to attend a campaign rally back in Spain.

Away from the leaders attending the summit, tensions between the regions have much deeper roots, leaders and diplomats acknowledged. 

The EU has to acknowledge its own mistakes from the past, said outgoing Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte as he arrived for the first day of the summit on Monday. In the past, the EU often did not pick up the phone when countries in Asia, Africa or Latin America called. 

“So there’s a lot of irritation with a lot of countries: now you need us, even though you weren’t there for us in the past,” Rutte said.

Sarah Anne Aarup and Suzanne Lynch contributed reporting.