The first act of the Spanish presidency of the Council of the EU, which starts on the 1st, will be a surprise trip by the Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, to kyiv. There he will meet, “with the symbolic value that he has”, with President Volodimir Zelensky, and will deliver a speech before the national Parliament.
Moncloa sources explain that the decision has been consensual and closed and that is how both leaders have explained it to the rest of the European leaders, meeting today in Brussels for a European Council. Sánchez will leave the community capital on Friday when the Summit ends, he will travel at night and arrive, as on previous occasions, by train, from Poland. Zelenski has intervened in the session dedicated to Security and Defense of the European Council by videoconference. He has been the one who has given the news, according to Moncloa, since no one else had been informed in advance.
This will be the third displacement of the president since the beginning of the war. He will not be accompanied by any community leader. “We want to make visible, on behalf of the 27, the seamless support of the EU, in the political, military and economic fields. We want to reinforce the commitment,” the same sources explain.
On Sunday afternoon, Sánchez has an agenda in Madrid, as he meets that day in Moncloa with the President of the European Council, Charles Michel, with whom he will have a working dinner. The next day it will be the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, who travels with the entire College of Commissioners, as is usual at the beginning of any presidency. In that meeting she talks about the priorities, the challenges and the most important issues for the semester.
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