Pressure is building on Europe to appoint a special envoy for peace talks between Russia and Ukraine. Both Moscow and Kyiv have signaled openness to such a mediator at a time when Trump’s negotiating team is squarely focused on the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz — like Merkel, a member of the center-right Christian Democrats — said Monday that appointing one negotiator who speaks for the entire bloc “is currently not planned,” while adding that discussions on the matter are ongoing at the European level as well as in a smaller format with France and the U.K.
He also warned of false hopes.
“Above all, we hope that we can strengthen Moscow’s willingness to come to the negotiating table,” Merz said in response to a reporter’s question during a press conference with his Bulgarian counterpart in Berlin. “Until the Russian government is ready to negotiate, we do not need to make any decisions on our side regarding representation.”
Merkel, who served as Germany’s chancellor from 2005 to 2021, said she had proposed establishing a diplomatic format between the EU and Russia during her last European Council meeting in October 2021 at the end of her tenure — four months before Russia’s all-out war on Ukraine began. But she added that it had failed due to differing opinions within the bloc on how best to deal with Moscow.
“You have to keep working on it until you reach a common position,” she said of those differences. “Diplomacy has always been the other side of the coin, also during the Cold War.”