EU leaders met in Brussels on Thursday and Friday with a packed agenda, ranging from the long-term budget and financial support for Ukraine to migration, energy and China.
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The summit alternated between strong positions on the bloc’s budget, a warm welcome from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and clashes over energy and migration policies.
Here are the five highlights.
Rallying behind Ukraine
The bitter feud between Zelensky and US President Donald Trump dominated the second day of the summit.
The leaders closed ranks behind Zelensky and vowed to keep sanctions in place as long as Russia continued its full-scale invasion. They also condemned Trump’s diesel deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin, even though Bulgaria’s prime minister broke ranks to support it.
The reception gave Zelensky a moment of diplomatic relief as Trump doubled down, saying Zelensky was “more difficult” to deal with than Putin and demanding new elections in Ukraine. Trump also called kyiv’s strikes on Russian oil refineries, its main leverage, a “disgrace.”
“I defend exclusively the interests of Ukraine and the Ukrainian people,” Zelensky said defiantly. “We have been attacked, occupied and our people have been killed. It makes perfect sense that we have the right to defend ourselves.”
“We will continue to live, to fight and, above all, to live with dignity,” he added.
In his speech, Zelensky asked leaders for additional financial and military support of 70 billion euros next year to counter Russia’s escalation.
The request upends the bloc’s plans, which assumed last year’s 90 billion euro loan would cover both 2026 and 2027. EU leaders have tasked the Commission with presenting a proposal on how to meet kyiv’s financial needs.
Filling the void will be anything but easy. Soaring borrowing costs make joint debt unpalatable. Tied-up Russian assets, which Zelensky raised again, remain a point of political contention. And bilateral contributions risk leaving the burden on a handful of rich countries.
EU budget
On Thursday, leaders debated at length the next multiannual financial framework (MFF) but, as expected, they made little progress, while “frugal” net contributors and “Friends of Cohesion” from the South and East retrenched.
One thing is clear: the negotiation framework presented a few days ago by the Irish presidency, which proposed reducing the overall budget by 141 billion euros to appease the thrifty, is now officially dead.
The President of the European Council, António Costa, will resume negotiations. He is expected to present a new compromise in the coming weeks, which many hope for before the extraordinary summit he convened on November 26, just days before the Spanish elections.
Costa should follow three main axes: keeping national contributions as low as possible, reworking the EU-wide tax package, notably building on the European Parliament’s proposals, and restoring the flexibility instruments that the Irish presidency has ruthlessly removed.
That Costa would intervene sooner or later was always a possibility. What’s even more worrying is that leaders from both parties are now openly stating that they feel no pressure to close the deal by the end of the year.
Seasoned negotiators know that deadlines require concessions. Member states may be playing with fire: a no-deal in December would open the possibility of negotiations dragging on until the end of an election season that could reshape Europe’s political landscape.
Migration
Migration has once again proven to be among the most controversial issues, after the last discussion in June turned into a fight between Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez on one side, Italy’s Giorgia Meloni and Denmark’s Mette Frederiksen on the other.
This time, unexpectedly, Rome reached out to Madrid just before the file hit the table on Friday. Italy and Spain have taken what appears to be a first step towards ending their border conflict, after a series of reciprocal controls introduced following the Ceuta crisis.
Temporary controls at Italy’s borders were due to expire on Thursday evening. They were extended by a week to align with those of Spain, which expire on October 22. Until then, the two interior ministers should agree on replacement measures.
But while Meloni opened the summit in a conciliatory tone, Sánchez’s other main European enemy, Frederiksen, did not spare his fellow social democrat on his plan to regularize the status of 600,000 migrants.
“I have asked the European Commission to look at what happens when one country does almost the exact opposite of what we all do,” Frederiksen said, referring to Spain without its name.
Meloni, Frederiksen and Dutch Prime Minister Rob Jetten hosted an informal breakfast before the discussion with 17 other EU leaders to explore “innovative solutions” on migration. Support for emergency measures to suspend asylum applications in times of crisis is growing.
Tensions between immigration hardliners and Spain and France came to the fore as the Italian, Danish and Polish governments pushed to rewrite the findings to call for avoiding “measures that could create incentives for illegal immigration.”
On the other hand, the final text simply invites the Commission to coordinate with the Member States “on all types of exploitation”.
China
On “macroeconomic imbalances”, EU jargon to avoid naming China, the leaders held firm despite the agreement between the European Commission and Beijing aimed at curbing imports of hybrid cars.
Over lunch on Thursday, they urged the Commission to prepare a toolbox of new trade defense instruments, including safeguards with quotas and tariffs, to protect the chemical and engineering industries from Chinese competition.
China occupies a prominent place as the bloc faces a trade deficit of around 360 billion euros with Beijing. Chemicals and machinery, among the sectors hardest hit by cheap Chinese imports, have been named as the next sectors in need of urgent protection after hybrid car quotas.
As car quotas were negotiated with Beijing, leaders on Thursday called for the introduction of unilateral safeguards “without delay”, according to officials.
The Commission presented last week’s agreement as the first phase of negotiations launched in June. But time is running out: the EU’s trade deficit with China continues to widen month after month, and Chinese customs data shows that Chinese exports to the EU have increased by 25% over the past year.
The EU’s strategy is to keep talking as long as the dialogue produces concrete results, while strengthening its trade defenses. France and Germany last week urged the Commission to develop a new instrument to quickly respond to market disruptions caused by China, accused of unfair trade practices.
“Competition must be fair. We will create instruments against capacity leverage, against high subsidies, against undervalued currencies. And there will be a toolbox for this. The toolbox will be bigger. It will also be applied if necessary,” said German Chancellor Friedrich Merz.
Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told leaders that her institution would start work on such a tool, although it is not yet clear whether it will be ready before the end of the year.
Other instruments are in preparation, including a diversification tool to encourage European companies to diversify their suppliers of strategic products such as critical raw materials, and a solidarity mechanism to help member states affected by possible Chinese countermeasures.
Energy
On Thursday, leaders were drawn into an endless discussion about energy. The Visegrád Group (V4) and Italy requested to amend the summit conclusions to call on the Commission to propose new measures to curb short-term fluctuations in electricity prices and to reassess the proposed Emissions Trading System (ETS).
The V4, Italy and, to a lesser extent, Greece led the campaign because they face some of the highest energy costs in Europe, a concern widely shared by other member states, who ultimately called for a coordinated European response to the current energy crisis.
The attempt to reopen the ETS, however, triggered an ideological reaction in Finland, Denmark and Sweden. The system requires companies to pay for their emissions and encourages investments in sustainable development.
In contrast, Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš slammed the carbon tax, accusing it of destroying Europe’s competitiveness by fueling soaring energy costs for the benefit of market speculators.
“We participated all day in a writing exercise at leadership level on something technical,” said a European official on the sidelines of the summit. “This does not result in new measures or new policies that actually help EU member states solve their problems.”
Rome and the V4 know that they lack the qualified majority to reopen the rules of the European carbon market. Rather, the goal was to signal to the national public that it was doing what it could to contain soaring energy prices.
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