Wider Europe

Welcome to Wider Europe, RFE/RL's newsletter focusing on the key issues concerning the European Union, NATO, and other institutions and their relationships with the Western Balkans and Europe's Eastern neighborhoods.

I'm RFE/RL Europe Editor Rikard Jozwiak, and this week I am drilling down on two issues: why the EU cannot agree on an envoy for Russia-Ukraine peace talks and what safeguards Montenegro could face when it joins the bloc.

Briefing #1: Can The EU Agree On An Envoy For Russia-Ukraine Peace Talks?

What You Need To Know: As US-led talks between Russia and Ukraine get underway in Abu Dhabi on November 10-11, the European Union and its member states are once again fretting about who will represent them, having failed to secure a seat at the top table in the Emirati capital.

But they will not be completely absent from Abu Dhabi.

The national-security advisers of the so-called “E3” -- France, Germany and the non-EU United Kingdom -- will be there, as will their Italian counterpart.

Bjorn Seibert, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s head of cabinet, Anna Maria Boura, the main foreign policy adviser to European Council President Antonio Costa; and Geoffrey Van Leeuwen, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte’s chief of staff, are also attending.

But like the representatives of the four major European nations, they will not be in the negotiating room. Instead, according to European diplomats who spoke to RFE/RL, they will spend their time “waiting in the corridors” and being briefed by the United States before and after the talks.

In that sense, not much has changed since Donald Trump took office in early 2025. Despite multiple rounds of peace talks in various locations and formats, Europe remains very much on the sidelines.

Deep Background: What has made the Europeans particularly nervous this time, however, is a comment by Jared Kushner, the US president’s son-in-law and peace envoy, who last week suggested that a broader European security architecture could be part of any peace deal.

The Europeans have responded defiantly, noting that nothing can be decided about them -- or Ukraine for that matter -- above their heads and without their consent.

They have also pointed out that they have real cards to play here, including the wide-ranging sanctions imposed on Moscow and the freeze on Russian assets. Moreover, it is up to them to decide whether and when Ukraine can join the EU.

Yet despite all the tough talk, they will, once again, spend time this week discussing whether to agree on a single envoy -- or perhaps several -- to represent them in future talks.

Having an envoy should at least improve their chances of securing a seat at the table, according to EU officials supporting the initiative.

The issue will be discussed when EU leaders assemble for an informal summit in Dublin on November 13, and potentially even more informally a day earlier, when leaders from across Europe, with the exception of Belarus and Russia, descend on the Irish capital for the semiannual European Political Community (EPC) gathering.

The debate was prompted by a rather angry letter that Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni sent to Costa last week, and which was seen by RFE/RL. In it, she said that she was “convinced that we all realize how, by projecting the image of Europe acting in an uncoordinated manner, we are simply playing into the hands of those who want this war to continue. I think this is unacceptable, considering that human lives and the future of our security are at stake.”

She was referring to the various formats in which European nations had participated in a seemingly uncoordinated manner according to her, including the recent phone call between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Finnish President Alexander Stubb accompanied by Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store.

Meloni added that “Europe needs to speak with a single, authoritative voice,” but she was also quick to point out that “I am not asking for a place for Italy in this or that format.”

In a more diplomatic response, Costa thanked Meloni for setting out her concerns “so clearly” and underlined that “Europe needs to act with coherence, unity and determination.”

Drilling Down

• Some officials RFE/RL has spoken to wonder whether Costa himself encouraged Meloni to write the letter, especially as the two potentially stand to gain the most from raising the issue.
• Under the EU treaties, the European Council president has a role in representing the bloc internationally. Yet it has become clear that France and Germany are unlikely to give up their own potential seats at the negotiating table in favor of Costa.
• Italy, meanwhile, is another major EU power, behind France and Germany. And while Meloni has made it clear that she isn't seeking special treatment for Rome, she has previously suggested that former Italian leaders, such as Mario Draghi, could serve as an envoy.
• Interestingly, Italy’s national-security adviser is also in Abu Dhabi, even though a more formal decision to include Rome would likely prompt other major EU nations, such as Poland and Spain, to push for a seat at the table, too.
• What is clear is that few want to see Gahr Store and Stubb continue in a mediating role. Other Nordic and Baltic nations, such as Russia hawks Denmark, Estonia, Lithuania, and Sweden, were furious about the call with Putin and the lack of prior coordination among the northern countries.
• Diplomats form several other countries also point out that Norway isn’t an EU member, while Stubb doesn’t attend EU summits, as that is the job of the Finnish prime minister.
• In private, some have also expressed irritation at Stubb's very public efforts to position himself at the center of any negotiations.
• Ultimately, the EU is likely to emerge from the Dublin summit in much the same position as before: without a single envoy to represent the bloc.
• One source noted that “we are constantly seeing pushing and pulling in all directions. The E3 have so far established themselves fairly strongly, and they have not done a bad job.” Another diplomat added that “the E3 won’t go away, that’s for sure.” A third predicted that there might be a “landing zone” agreed in Dublin involving the E3 and “stronger institutional backing but no definite decision.”

Briefing #2: The Safeguards Montenegro (And Other EU Newcomers) Will Face

What You Need To Know: In its annual EU enlargement report last week, the European Commission reiterated its hope that Montenegro will conclude accession negotiations by the end of the year.

To date, 23 of the 33 main policy chapters have been provisionally closed, and the EU executive believes that not only the remaining 10 but also two less talked-about additional chapters -- numbers 34 and 35 – can be concluded by then. Most European diplomats consider that an extremely ambitious goal.

Unlike the 33 main chapters, these two are usually dealt with toward the very end of the accession process, as work on drafting the accession treaty gathers pace. The European Commission hopes the treaty can be signed with Podgorica in June 2027.

We are not quite there yet. The working group tasked with drafting the treaty is still meeting just once a week in Brussels, rather than almost daily, as tends to happen when the process really picks up speed.

Chapter 34 should be relatively straightforward to conclude. It deals with institutions, meaning the rules needed to ensure that Montenegro is fairly represented in EU institutions, including having its own commissioner and a number of members in the European Parliament that reflects the size of its population.

Deep Background: Chapter 35, however, might prove to be trickier.

Nominally titled “Other Issues,” it allows EU member states to include a wide range of additional provisions.

Sometimes the chapter contains little of substance, but this time Montenegro may not be so lucky.

The EU is planning to include new safeguard clauses proposed by the European Commission in early October.

These measures essentially create something of a two-tier system between current EU member states and newcomers, who could now face being stripped of both money and voting rights more easily than is possible for the bloc’s current crop of 27 countries.

As the frontrunner for EU accession, Montenegro would be the first test case for the new rules, other countries hoping to join in the coming years -- including as Albania, Moldova, and Ukraine – could also face these safeguards.

Brussels has proposed the measures partly to reassure member states skeptical of further enlargement and, as several EU diplomats put it, “to avoid another Hungary.”

This is, of course, a reference to Brussels’ decade-long struggles with Viktor Orban’s government over various rule-of-law issues, which never resulted in Budapest losing its voting rights as that move required unanimity -- something that always proved elusive.

Drilling Down

• So, what is the European Commission proposing and how will the member states incorporate the measures into Montenegro’s accession process? Diplomats from EU member states held an initial discussion in late October, and they will return to the issue in the coming weeks. A readout seen by RFE/RL shows deep divisions among European capitals over how strict the safeguards should be.
• Three of the safeguards -- covering economic issues, home affairs, and the EU's internal market -- were also on the table in previous enlargement rounds. If the European Commission or a current member state identifies problems involving a newcomer in one of these areas, the EU can quickly introduce temporary restrictions to prevent those problems from affecting other member states. Previously, these safeguards could be activated only during the first three years after accession. The Commission is now proposing to “significantly extend” that period, although it has not specified a new limit.
• In discussions among EU member states, two of the main enlargement skeptics, France and the Netherlands, have called for even more safeguards in other areas, saying that that they are necessary to secure both public and parliamentary backing for adding new members to the union. Denmark agreed with this, while Belgium and Finland also spoke positively about the measures.
• Several other member states, however, including Italy and Spain, said that the proposed measures should be exceptional and temporary and should not create some sort of second-tier membership. Austria, one of the biggest supporters of EU enlargement in the Western Balkans, added that debates over safeguards must not delay Montenegro's accession
• Then there is the “postponement clause” -- another tool available to the European Commission and current member states can use. As the name suggests, the idea here is to simply delay another state joining the bloc if rule-of-law issues in the candidate country are considered a threat.
• Normally, this clause applies for only one year, but the idea is now to extend this period given that it often takes more than 12 months to ratify a new EU accession treaty. Again, judging from discussions among diplomats, countries like Belgium, Denmark, and France are very much in favor of a strong postponement clause.
• But it is another safeguard, an entirely new one, that has provoked the most debate: the institutional safeguard clause. Under the commission's proposal, it could apply for up to 15 years after accession and, if triggered, could lead to the suspension of Montenegro's EU funding and even its voting rights in the Council -- measures reminiscent of those some EU countries have previously sought against Hungary..
• The big difference, however, would be the voting threshold. Under the proposed safeguard mechanism, sanctions put forward by the European Commission would be "deemed adopted" unless rejected by a qualified majority of member states -- a procedure known in Brussels as reverse qualified majority voting.
• Some countries, including Greece and Spain, have voiced their opposition to this new, potential tool but others ae very much in favor, including heavyweights such as France and Germany, as well as Denmark and the Netherlands.
• The biggest unresolved question is how to trigger the clause. The Netherlands, Germany, and Denmark support reverse qualified majority voting, while countries such as Spain and Poland want at least a qualified majority of member states (55 percent representing 65 percent of the total EU population) voting in favor before the sanctions can take effect.

Looking Ahead

The big events this week will be the two summits in Dublin: first, the meeting of the European Political Community on November 12, followed by an informal EU summit the next day.

Also worth watching is the European Parliament's two-day plenary session in Brussels on November 11-12, where lawmakers will discuss efforts to secure the return of Ukrainian children abducted by Russia, as well as the prospect of further EU sanctions against Moscow.

That's all for this week!

Feel free to reach out to me on any of these issues on X @RikardJozwiak, or via e-mail at jozwiakr@rferl.org.

Until next time,

Rikard Jozwiak

If you enjoyed this briefing and don't want to miss the next edition subscribe here.

Welcome to Wider Europe, RFE/RL's newsletter focusing on the key issues concerning the European Union, NATO, and other institutions and their relationships with the Western Balkans and Europe's Eastern neighborhoods.

I'm RFE/RL's Europe Editor Rikard Jozwiak, and this week I'm drilling down on two issues: Can the EU add Russia's GRU to its terror list? Plus, more rolling EU sanctions on Moscow.

Briefing #1: Can The EU Add The GRU To Its Terror List?

What You Need To Know: The European Union is at an early stage of exploring whether it is possible to put the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence agency, on the bloc’s terrorist list. The recent spate of hybrid attacks on various EU member states, many of them either directly or indirectly linked to GRU, has prompted diplomats and lawyers in the club to look into first if it is legally possible, and then to explore if there is enough political will around the table in Brussels to do so. The legality of such a move is being carefully studied, as the move by Brussels to terror list Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) in early January was a watershed moment for the EU. Previously, terrorist designations were reserved for clear non-state actors such as Hamas or Al-Qaeda. Listing the IRGC not only opened the possibility of targeting a formal branch of a sovereign state’s military and intelligence apparatus, but also codified the concept of “state-sponsored terrorism” in the EU’s legal framework. The EU designation of an entity or outfit as a terrorist organization must be based on a previous court decision in an EU member state or a trusted third country. In the case of the IRGC, the legal “smoking gun” was the 2023 ruling by the Dusseldorf higher regional court that an attempted arson attack against a synagogue in the nearby German city of Bochum a year earlier had been explicitly planned and carried out by the Iranian organization.

Deep Background: The challenge -- and something that is being looked into right now -- is if there is a similar ruling concerning the GRU. And that can prove tricky. So far, individual member states have officially charged GRU officers, often in absentia, under charges such as espionage or attempted murder -- but not terrorism. According to European diplomats that are familiar with the issue, national prosecutors are restricted to the technical definitions of their respective national penal codes. This means traditional criminal or intelligence-related charges but not terrorism. Look, for example, at the 2014 Vrbetice ammunition depot explosions in the Czech Republic. The country’s prosecutors did name two GRU officers as responsible but Czech law does not allow for a full criminal trial or conviction since the suspects remain in Russia. Or the Salisbury, England, Novichok poisoning targeting the former Russian agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter in 2018. Here, GRU agents (incidentally the same as in Vrbetice) were charged in absentia but for attempted murder and the use of chemical weapons -- not terrorism.

Drilling Down

• Perhaps the two most promising openings for pursuing the GRU as a terrorist organization come from Lithuania. In the first case, it involves an incident in 2024 when incendiary devices were supposed to be planted onto cargo planes bound for the United States and Canada but caught fire in warehouses in Germany, Poland, and the United Kingdom. Lithuanian prosecutors charged 15 individuals in 2025 with terrorism, but these people were GRU-recruited operational proxies rather than direct GRU officers. The question for the legal minds in Brussels to ponder is if this link is strong enough.
• Then there is the ongoing trial in the Baltic state in which six foreign nationals are accused of planning an arson attack in September 2024 targeting a private military supplier in the Lithuanian city of Siauliai that provides support to Ukraine. As in the first case, these people might be just proxies, but the link to GRU is allegedly a strong one, potentially paving the way for a terror designation.
• Even if there is a clear legal pathway to designate GRU as a terrorist organization on the EU level, the question is if there is political appetite to go that far. Unanimity among the 27 EU member states is needed and some might argue that keeping diplomatic channels of communication open is essential as Moscow might retaliate to such a move by targeting European embassies, missions, or even culture houses still in the country.
• The fact that the GRU is already sanctioned by the EU and hence has its assets in the bloc frozen and its leadership under visa ban should be sufficient, according to some Brussels officials. But more hawkish member states believe it is not enough. They note that a formal terror listing covers the entire institution, meaning that every single officer is targeted and therefore closes a loophole in which individuals not yet sanctioned could travel into the EU and operate more easily.
• Another argument put forward as to why the terror listing is necessary is that it opens up the door for European prosecutors and police forces to arrest and convict the local proxy networks, including EU citizens, that tend to carry out hybrid attacks on behalf of the GRU.
• It would also make it easier to issue EU-wide counterterrorism arrest warrants, as GRU operations would be fully integrated into Europol’s European Counter Terrorism Center (ECTC), and would strengthen cross-border intelligence tracking of the organization’s communications and safe houses within the bloc.

Briefing #2: The EU’s Rolling Russia Sanctions Continue

What You Need To Know: The European Union appears poised to continue adding to its Russia sanctions. Having seemingly moved away from big sectoral packages, the current method is to add more visa bans and asset freezes on people and companies on a monthly basis. When EU foreign ministers met on October 12, they formally approved the blacklisting of 1,600 new names, largely from the Russian military industry sector, taking the total number of people and entities sanctioned to over 4,600 since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. When the bloc’s foreign ministers meet again on November 16, they hope to add more. A new proposal, seen by RFE/RL, was presented to the 27 member states’ ambassadors in Brussels on October 21.While smaller in scale than the previous blacklisting -- with only 12 individuals and 105 companies proposed so far -- some of the names in the new proposal are of a much higher level. In the previous round, most EU diplomats, when pressed, could not even name a handful of those sanctioned, reflecting their low significance.

Deep Background: Perhaps the most significant person to be newly blacklisted is Tatyana Kim, the founder and CEO of Wildberries, Russian largest online retailer whose warehouses have been a frequent target of Ukrainian strikes in recent months. The sanctions proposal notes that “Wildberries functions as a supply network for the Russian military by facilitating the sale of military and dual-use goods” and adds that “the company has formed a strategic partnership with majority state owned VTB Bank, an entity listed by the European Union.” Businesspeople such as Aleksandr Chachava, who is described as an “entrepreneur,” and Ruslan Baysarov, referred to as “a billionaire,” are also on the list. Chachava is the owner of Russian investment holding company JSC "O23," which holds the biggest stake in Russia’s second-largest e-commerce company Ozon. The document notes that “Ozon serves as a supply network for the Russian military by facilitating the sale of military equipment and dual-use goods.” On top of that he also holds a stake in the country’s biggest IT company Yandex, which “generates substantial revenue for the government of the Russian Federation.” Baysarov is the chairman of JSC Bamtonnelstroy-Most (BTS-Most), a major infrastructure and transport construction enterprise in Russia and has also acquired a controlling stake in BTS-Gold, a significant gold mining company that is already sanctioned by Brussels.

Another interesting name is Sergei Matvienko, a Russian businessman whose mother Valentina Matvienko is the chairwoman of the Federation Council, Russia's upper house of parliament, and already on the bloc’s sanctions list since 2014 for supporting the Russian annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula at the time. Sergei Matvienko is proposed for blacklisting for being a shareholder of LLC Megalit-Okhta Group, one of Russia’s largest real-estate developers, which according to the text “acts as a major fiscal contributor to the budget of the Russian Federation.” He is also listed for his ownership of the Russian construction company LLC Parameter that “specializes in the collection, treatment, and repair of wastewater and sewage systems, working primarily with major clients on governmental contracts.” Other people on the list include managers of vessels transporting Russian oil as well as businesspeople involved in the Russian energy sector.

Drilling Down

• Among the entities, there are several smaller and medium-sized Russian banks, including several regional ones -- a clear strategy as the major Russian financial institutions have already been targeted. Many of them are being sanctioned for offering loan-repayment grace periods to members of the Russian armed forces, especially those involved in the war against Ukraine.
• There are also numerous companies on the suggested blacklist that control or own Russian oil refineries with the proposal stating that “the energy sector, in particular the oil sector, is a sector providing a substantial source of revenue to the Russian government.”
• Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the entities listed is how many of them are non-Russian. The EU has gradually started to target firms in other countries that it believes are aiding the Kremlin, and this is one of the most ambitious attempts yet.
• Several companies from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are proposed for sanctioning. The EU sets out that these companies, often through shell companies, manage “vessels that transport crude oil or petroleum products originating in Russia or exported from Russia and practice irregular and high-risk shipping practices.”
• Two companies registered in the Seychelles are also proposed for targeting on the same grounds. In addition, several Chinese companies based in Hong Kong are included; they are either purchasing Russian oil or own multiple vessels already sanctioned by the EU for transporting Russian oil and petroleum products.

Looking Ahead

Look out for the EU-Canada summit in Montreal on October 29-30. The meeting comes as the pair seeks closer ties, with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen having earlier in the year floated the still-undefined idea of offering Canada “associate membership” of the EU. That idea might not have much political mileage as such a thing doesn’t yet exist and Ottawa might also not have much interest, but Canada could instead join the EU’s Erasmus student mobility program and its Galileo satellite navigation system.

That's all for this week!

Feel free to reach out to me on any of these issues on X @RikardJozwiak, or on e-mail at jozwiakr@rferl.org.

Until next time,

Rikard Jozwiak

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