Five summit subplots to watch

By Craig Weinneker

At the highest levels of European Union politics, the rule is usually this: Reach agreement first, meet later.
In the days leading up to EU summits — whether they are “crisis” summits or just the normal ones — draft “conclusions” circulate among national capitals as diplomats seek to build consensus on key issues before leaders gather around the table.
That means there’s little suspense for the people in the room, who are not usually fond of surprises anyway and react very badly to having their time wasted. But it also means there’s little that isn’t known ahead of time for everyone else.
Draft conclusions for this Thursday and Friday’s meeting of EU leaders circulated this week among national capitals listing four headline items: “migration,” “security,” “jobs, growth and competitiveness,” and “U.K.” The wording hints at pre-agreement that Europe “needs a balanced and geographically comprehensive approach to migration”; that it should move forward with “strategic reflection” on foreign and security policy; and that the EU needs to promote growth in digital technologies.
But the trick is to read between the lines — or in some cases, the blank spaces — to find out where the disagreements are likely to start. Here are five key subplots to watch at the summit set for Thursday and Friday (and maybe Saturday? Just kidding!).

How many speeds can Europe have?

Just about every issue that will be discussed in and around this summit divides countries into different camps moving at different speeds — defined by whether they want more or less Europe on any given issue.
There used to be two speeds, with some countries agreeing to everything and others opting out of major European projects like the euro and the Schengen area. Now there are all kinds of speeds. Consider the number of proposals floating around for how to move forward on European integration in general.
Not content to wait around for David Cameron to tell them how to restructure the European Union, Angela Merkel and François Hollande decided in late May to come up with their own idea: an attempt to restart the old Franco-German engine of European integration — but on a more manageable scale, and without re-opening the treaties.
That was soon followed by another French-German proposal from lower down the food chain. Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel and French economy minister Emmanuel Macron called for “an economic and social union by agreeing on a new, staged process of convergence” that would include such provocative ideas as social and tax convergence — non-starters that ensure that they will keep moving at their own speed.
Then there’s a proposal from the so-called Five Presidents: Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker; European Council chief Donald Tusk; the Eurogroup’s head Jeroen Dijsselbloem; Mario Draghi, the president of the European Central Bank; and European Parliament President Martin Schulz.
The quintet is calling for greater eurozone integration and stricter controls over the budgets of the 19 countries that use the single currency. Their report will be presented by Schulz at his traditional opening-act meeting with EU leaders ahead of the actual summit.
Senior diplomats say EU leaders will welcome the report — and ask for another one.

Greece: the almost-endgame

This is one time when the “elephant in the room” cliché actually applies. Officially, Greece is not on the agenda for this summit at all, but the issue will loom over the two-day meeting, just as it has devoured this week and many weeks before it.
For one thing, the decision on how to handle the Greek situation involves just 19 of the 28 countries that will be around the table at the summit.
Those 19 eurozone leaders made it clear on Monday night in another hastily called meeting that they do not want to still be wrestling with this question at the end of the week. The matter was supposed to have been taken care of by Eurogroup finance ministers meeting in Brussels Wednesday night. But that meeting also failed to reach a conclusion and the drama will continue right up until it threatens to swallow the full summit.
“Their expectation is not to negotiate, it is to approve the decision of the Eurogroup,” said a senior EU official Wednesday, before the aborted Eurogroup meeting. “The leaders told Dijsselbloem on Monday they don’t want to negotiate, they want to approve a deal.”
The question is when they will get the chance.

Migration of terms

Migration, said one senior diplomat, is “the single biggest issue for this Council.”
EU leaders have consistently sought to show solidarity in the EU response to the humanitarian crisis on Europe’s southern shores. They’re going to have trouble keeping up appearances over the next two days.
The last two months have seen cracks forming in the veneer as several countries resisted a proposal to relocate asylum-seekers across the Union using a system of mandatory quotas.
Draft conclusions circulated just before the summit required significant parsing. The word “mandatory” was nowhere to be found, but neither was “voluntary.”
That was by design, officials say, as Council President Tusk is now trying to move the question beyond the tug of war that has been going on since late April between Juncker, who has made the mandatory quotas a kind of personal crusade, and reticent member states, who oppose it.
“There has never been a consensus behind the idea of mandatory quotas,” said one senior EU official. “The leaders need to ask themselves the question, ‘What is the purpose of the meeting?’ It’s not about mandatory or voluntary. It’s what is going to help the problem.”
The conclusions try to move past the mandatory/voluntary conundrum by using terms like “temporary and exceptional” and putting off the final decision on how the whole thing will actually work until the end of July.
The conclusion, in other words, is inconclusive.

Brexit fill-in-the-blank

Here’s one agenda item on which the preliminary conclusions for the summit may be most accurate, even in draft form. Under the heading “U.K.” the page is blank.
That’s because there will be no real conclusions coming out of the meeting on the question of the U.K.-EU reform negotiations. David Cameron has done some preliminary work of his own, meeting over the past few weeks with nearly all of the other EU leaders to lay out areas where he wants to talk.
Diplomats say Thursday’s discussion will be a short and sweet summary of those meetings. Tusk has already informed everyone that it will take place “at the end of the dinner.”
The idea, according to a British diplomat, is to launch the negotiations but not actually get started on them. “It will be a relatively short exchange,” the diplomat said. “The leaders will agree to keep a technical discussion going” with a view to making some real decisions at the next summit in October.
When the actual summit conclusions are reached, they will of course contain some actual words under the U.K heading. But according to several officials, they will simply be a political agreement to start talking about specifics.

Jobs, growth and competitiveness!

No summit would be complete without these three words, which are not so much Council conclusions as they are something that should be on a t-shirt worn to every EU meeting.
Leaders at this summit will agree those words remain important, according to the draft conclusions making the rounds this week, which put them in bold and all caps and underline.
To back up the sloganeering, they will express support for a series of economic measures, from endorsing the European Commission’s economic governance report cards on member states, to rubber-stamping Juncker’s €315 billion EU investment program, to an ambitious Digital Single Market strategy.
The initiatives are important and, for the most part, everyone agrees on them. But with all the other sturm und drang, will anyone even notice?