Leaders from across Europe are gathering Thursday for the ninth summit of the European Political Community, a forum that brings together European Union members and a wider circle of European countries that are not part of the bloc for informal talks on shared challenges. A separate informal meeting of EU heads of state and government follows on Friday.
The European Political Community was created in 2022 as a way to keep lines of communication open across the whole of Europe, including countries that are EU members, candidates for membership, and others that are neither but share close ties with the bloc. The idea was to create a space for leaders to talk regularly outside the more formal and often slower machinery of EU institutions, covering topics such as energy supply, migration, infrastructure and security that affect the continent as a whole regardless of EU membership status.
The format has become a fixture of the European calendar, rotating host countries and meeting roughly twice a year since its founding. Attendance typically includes the leaders of all 27 EU member states alongside counterparts from a wider group of around 20 additional European countries, making it one of the largest regular gatherings of heads of state and government anywhere in the world.
Because the forum is explicitly informal, with no requirement to issue joint communiques or binding agreements, its discussions tend to be less about producing a specific deliverable and more about maintaining relationships and coordinating positions among a large and diverse set of countries. The following day's informal EU leaders' meeting is expected to focus more narrowly on business specific to the European Union itself.
Official readouts from both the European Political Community summit and the informal EU leaders' meeting are expected over the coming days.
What is the European Political Community?
It is an informal forum, created in 2022, that brings together leaders from European Union member states and other European countries for regular talks on shared continental challenges.
Does the summit produce binding agreements?
No, the forum is explicitly informal and is designed for dialogue rather than binding joint decisions.