EU ready to sign off on training for Ukrainian troops

Good morning and welcome to Europe Express.

European decision-making isn’t exactly known for its celerity, but yesterday there was some progress on a planned training mission for Ukrainian troops, with a decision expected on Monday. We’ll unpack the details and why the bloc still has some catching up to do with the UK and the US.

French president Emmanuel Macron, meanwhile, blurted out a nuclear gaffe, much to the chagrin of his western allies, when he stated that France would not respond with nuclear weapons if Russia used its own atomic arsenal against Ukraine or “the region”. With friends like these . . . 

And in Italy, we look at how the first day of the new parliament unfolded, complete with the stark contrast provided by the new head of the senate (a Mussolini fan) and a Holocaust survivor who presided over his election.

Train to victory

Better late than never for the EU’s long-discussed, long-delayed Ukraine military training mission, which will get a formal green light next week writes Henry Foy in Brussels.

After months (and months) of arguing over location, remit, scope and — of course — money, foreign ministers will have a politically-agreed deal to sign off on at the Foreign Affairs Council on Monday, according to Josep Borrell, the EU’s chief diplomat.

The upshot: formally headquartered in Brussels, the actual training will happen mainly in south-east Poland, with a smaller training site in Germany. EU troops will train Ukrainians according to Kyiv’s needs, officials said, with additional instruction tailored to the specific weapons systems being provided to Ukraine by EU governments.

Funded with cash from the European Peace Facility for an initial two years, officials admit the initiative will also likely need ad hoc funding from committed member states.

The EU has some catching up to do: the US has been training Ukrainians since long before Russia’s full-scale invasion in February, while a UK facility set up this spring will have trained 10,000 Ukrainians by the end of the year.

Indeed, one senior EU diplomat who has been lobbying for this for months, described its creation after so long as “more bitter than sweet”. “It will do what is needed,” they added. “It will be a moving puzzle.”

Borrell himself used the mission as the punchline for a joke about convoluted, dithering EU decision-making, in his already infamous speech to bloc ambassadors early this week.

“We had been discussing about the Ukrainian training mission before the war for months,” he said, mocking deliberating EU officials. “And then, boom, the war comes and people said: ‘we should have done it’.”

“Yes, we should have done it. And now we are doing it quickly. Well, quickly for European standards,” he added, with a pause for effect: “Quickly for European standards means a couple of months.”

Chart du jour: Southern counter-offensive

The Russian-installed head of the occupied Ukrainian region of Kherson has appealed to Moscow for help in evacuating residents, signalling that Kyiv’s counteroffensive in the area may be picking up steam after its forces broke through Russian front lines at the beginning of the month.

Italian juxtapositions

Italy’s newly elected parliament convened for the first time yesterday, with the jarring spectacle of an Italian Holocaust survivor presiding over the election of a politician well-known for his nostalgia for Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, write Amy Kazmin and Giuliana Ricozzi in Rome.

Lilliana Segre, 92, was the only member of her Jewish family to survive Auschwitz, to which they were deported from Milan in January 1944. She was appointed senator in 2018, on the 80th anniversary of the fascist racial laws that saw her barred from attending school.

Italy’s new senate president, Ignazio Benito La Russa, 75, is the co-founder of Giorgia Meloni’s far-right Fratelli d’Italia, which emerged as the largest party in last month’s election and is now poised to lead Italy’s first far-right government since the second world war.

Just days before the September election, La Russa told a television interviewer that all Italians are “heirs of Il Duce” — the title Mussolini used during his 20 years of dictatorial rule.

In her opening address, Segre acknowledged the “weird destiny” of presiding over the senate just as Italy draws nears to the 100th anniversary of the March on Rome that saw Mussolini seize power.

“It is impossible not to feel vertigo remembering that child, sad and lost, on a day like this in 1938, that was forced by racial laws to abandon her elementary school desk,” she said.

La Russa’s father, Antonino, was local political secretary in Sicily for Mussolini’s Fascist party and later helped launch neo-fascist Italian Social Movement (MSI), founded by Mussolini loyalists after the war.

In his acceptance speech in the Senate, La Russa, who several years ago proudly showed off his collection of Mussolini memorabilia to journalists, said he had been involved in politics “since I was born”, owing to his father’s life-long involvement in the far-right movement.

La Russa’s election is a victory for Meloni, who had faced demands from her coalition partners, Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia and Matteo Salvini’s League, for alternative candidates for the prestigious post. The president of the senate is the second-highest ranking figure in Italy’s official hierarchy after the nation’s president.

Most Forza Italia senators abstained from casting ballots and La Russa’s 116 votes in favour therefore apparently included some votes from senators that are not from either of the three coalition parties. In addition, 66 senators cast “blank” votes against him.

A frail Berlusconi, 86, returning to the senate nine years after he was expelled over tax fraud, was also heard snarling an obscenity in La Russa’s direction during the proceedings.

All this suggests plenty of turbulence ahead as Italy’s trio of rightwing frenemies continue their painful effort to put together a new government and decide who should be cast in which ministries.

How concerned are you about Italy’s incoming government? Click here to take the poll.

What to watch today

1. European Commission vice-president Valdis Dombrovskis holds joint news conference with US trade secretary Gina Raimondo in Washington

2. EU interior ministers meet in Luxembourg

3. Stefano Sannino, secretary-general of the EU diplomatic service, speaks at the EU ambassadors’ conference in Brussels

Smart reads

• Energy fund: In this blog post, Bruegel’s Simone Tagliapietra, Georg Zachmann and Jeromin Zettelmeyer make the case for an EU energy fund, but not to encourage more spending and fuel inflation, rather to ensure a level playing field across the bloc, encourage energy savings and increase local gas production.

• Millennials and Gen-Z concerns: Teenagers and young adults across Europe who were surveyed by The Foundation for European Progressive Studies and ThinkYoung have listed job security, health and climate change as their main concerns. Nearly 70 per cent of respondents said the Covid-19 pandemic had shown that more co-operation was needed at the European level.