EU leaders call for greater defence spending as rift with US grows

French president Emmanuel Macron walks with Italy's prime minister Giorgia Meloni, after the meeting of leaders from key European Union nations and the United Kingdom, in Paris, Picture: Aurelien Morissard/AP

European leaders meeting in Paris on Monday for emergency talks called for higher spending to ramp up the continent's defence capabilities but remained split on the idea of deploying peacekeepers to Ukraine to back up any peace deal.

The Paris meeting was called by French president Emmanuel Macron after US president Donald Trump arranged bilateral peace talks with Russia, excluding European allies and Ukraine from negotiations to end the war that are scheduled to begin in Saudi Arabia.

European officials have been left stunned and flat-footed by the Trump administration's moves on Ukraine, Russia, and European defence in recent days, and must now confront the reality of a future with less US protection.

The US decision to go it alone with Russia has sparked a realisation among European nations that they will have to do more to ensure Ukraine's security.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who ahead of the meeting said he was willing to send peacekeeping troops to Ukraine, on Monday evening said there must be a US security commitment for European countries to put boots on the ground. He said it was too early to say how many British troops he would be willing to deploy.

A peacekeeping force would not only raise the risk of a direct confrontation with Russia, which launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, but also stretch European armies, whose arsenals have been depleted by supplying Ukraine and decades of relative peace.

There are also difficult questions about how some European nations, whose public finances are groaning, will pay for such expanded military commitments.

Mr Starmer's push for peacekeepers appeared to draw a dividing line between participants in Paris.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said there could be no peace deal without Ukraine's consent, but said talk of a German peacekeeping mission in Ukraine was "highly inappropriate" without any peace deal in hand. Instead, he said European nations spending over 2% of their gross domestic product on defense should not be blocked by European Union budget rules.

Italy's Giorgia Meloni said she, too, was against the peacekeeping plan.

The one that foresees the deployment of European soldiers in Ukraine seems to me to be the most complex and perhaps the least effective, and on this too I voiced Italy's doubts.

Tánaiste Simon Harris will update Cabinet today on the changing situation in Ukraine, and is to bring forward a proposal early next month to approve up to €50m in non-lethal military support to Ukraine outside the European Peace Facility (EPF) mechanism.

The Tánaiste will tell his ministerial colleagues that Ireland has been met with significant difficulties in providing a committed €250m in non-lethal military support to Ukraine under the EPF because the Ukraine Assistance Fund remains blocked at EU level by Hungary.

The move to provide separate €50m funding will be a way to counter these challenges.

Since the full-scale Russian invasion in February 2022, the Government has maintained a policy of “military neutrality” and has restricted assistance to “non-lethal” military aid.

The EPF is a fund worth over €17bn financed outside the EU budget for a period of seven years until 2027, with a single mechanism to finance all actions under the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) in military and defence areas.

Mr Harris will also tell Cabinet that there is a need for Ireland to issue a strong statement of solidarity on the third anniversary of Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, which falls next Monday.

In advance of this morning's Cabinet meeting, the Tánaiste is due to attend an Extraordinary Informal Summit of leaders from the European People’s Party (EPP), including European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, via video conference to discuss the situation in Ukraine.