Nearly fifty European leaders will attend the CPE meeting in the United Kingdom

Starmer to use meeting focused on ‘security and migration’ to ‘rebuild relations with key European partners’

14 Jul. () –

More than 45 European leaders will meet in the UK on Thursday for a meeting of the European Political Community (EPC), the intergovernmental forum founded by French President Emmanuel Macron, to discuss the strategic future of the continent, with a special emphasis on security and migration.

The meeting will take place at Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire on Thursday 18 July and will be hosted by British Prime Minister Keir Starmer for the first time since coming to power.

This is the fourth meeting of the EPC since the group was founded in October 2022. Previous meetings, held in the Czech Republic, Moldova and Spain, “have been instrumental in bringing Europe together to support Ukraine, forge cooperation on energy security and address the shared challenge of illegal migration,” Downing Street said in a statement.

“The British Government will use this meeting to discuss closer collaboration in combating illegal migration and to strengthen security cooperation with its European counterparts,” the statement added.

Starmer said that for the first time since its founding, representatives of NATO, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, and the Council of Europe will attend this meeting “to demonstrate the importance of unity in response to the range of conflict and instability within and near Europe’s borders.”

In what he also described as a move to “rebuild relations with key European partners”, Starmer will host his Irish counterpart Simon Harris before the summit and hold a bilateral dinner with Macron after the meeting.