The venue is a glittering 18th-century palace and the birthplace of Winston Churchill. The guests include more than 40 of Europe’s leaders. And, King Charles III will be on hand to host a V.I.P. reception.
Yet despite the serene grandeur of the surroundings at Blenheim Palace, near Oxford, the continent’s top politicians will meet on Thursday in a mood of heightened anxiety and with a growing urgency to find common cause in an unsettled world.
Rolling out the red carpet as host is Britain’s prime minister, Keir Starmer, who is pushing to strengthen British relations with European governments on security, migration and trade, as the world contemplates the prospect of a return to the White House for former President Donald J. Trump.
The meeting is the fourth of the European Political Community, the brainchild of the French president, Emmanuel Macron, in 2022, who wanted countries across the continent to work together to confront collective challenges.
There is no shortage of those today, with war raging in Ukraine and the possibility of a second term for Mr. Trump, who has threatened to undermine NATO by withdrawing protection from countries that fail to pay their way. Some European lawmakers have worried openly that a Trump administration could end support for Ukraine and embolden Russia. In March, President Donald Tusk of Poland warned that Europe was in a “prewar era” and should prepare accordingly.
“Clearly events in Milwaukee will hang over this summit,” said Kim Darroch, a former British national security adviser, referring to this week’s Republican National Convention, where Mr. Trump announced J.D. Vance, a critic of U.S. support for Ukraine, as his vice-presidential nominee.
Sophia Gaston, head of foreign policy at Policy Exchange, a British research institute, said the possibility of a second Trump presidency would be the “elephant in the room,” adding: “There is going to be a bit of pressure on Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Poland — the big security actors in Europe — to make some kind of demonstration that Ukraine’s future is in hand.”
Despite the troubled backdrop, the meeting is an opportunity for Mr. Starmer to restore Britain’s reputation as a leading player in Europe, and to draw closer to the European Union, after 14 years of Conservative government during which ties with close neighbors were ruptured after Brexit.
Leaders gathering on Thursday “will fire the starting gun on this government’s new approach to Europe,” said Mr. Starmer in a statement released by his office, “one that will not just benefit us now, but for generations to come.” In its statement Downing Street noted that Blenheim Palace is “the birthplace of Churchill who stood up to a previous generation of aggression on European soil.”
The founding concept of the group is to bring together countries inside the European Union with those outside. Not everyone signs on to Mr. Macron’s ambition of bolstering Europe’s autonomy. Divisions inside the 27-nation European Union have intensified since Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orban, assumed the bloc’s six-month rotating presidency. He has aligned himself with Mr. Trump and recently visited President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia in Moscow, prompting criticism from across Europe.
At Blenheim, the leaders will discuss Ukraine and, in smaller groups, migration, energy and defending democracy. There will be no formal summit conclusions, removing the need for diplomats to wrangle over wording, but there will be a closing media conference at which Mr. Starmer will summarize the outcome. “It’s the best of both worlds because he basically sets the story of the summit, and you avoid officials locked away in an airless room arguing about single words in written conclusions,” said Mr. Darroch, a former top U.K. diplomat in Washington and Brussels and now a member of the House of Lords.
Mr. Starmer plans to move closer to the European Union by striking a security pact with the bloc and improving a minimalist post-Brexit trade agreement struck by Boris Johnson, a former prime minister.
Exploratory talks began earlier this week in Brussels but are unlikely to move far on Thursday partly because the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, cannot attend as she faces a vote to confirm her reappointment. But Mr. Starmer on Wednesday met Simon Harris, the Irish prime minister, and he is scheduled to hold a one-on-one meeting on Thursday with Mr. Macron, whose help he will need to build bridges with the bloc.
He also wants to build on his predecessor Rishi Sunak’s relationship with Giorgia Meloni, the Italian prime minister who has led her far-right party into the mainstream. They spoke on the day he became prime minister, and he will attend a session on migration that she will jointly chair.
On Ukraine, European diplomats will want to coordinate their efforts to try to persuade Mr. Trump to maintain support for the government in Kyiv, Mr. Darroch said, by arguing that without it, Russia would be in a dominant position, weakening Mr. Trump’s own ability to negotiate an end to the war on reasonable terms for Kyiv.
“If he sticks behind Ukraine, somewhere down the track there is going to have to be a settlement which he can try to claim credit for,” he added, “but which wouldn’t be bad for Ukraine in the way that the one he is proposing immediately would be.”
Things have changed since Mr. Trump was last in the White House, when he demanded an increase in European military spending. Now 23 of the 32 NATO member nations are on course to hit a target of spending 2 percent of gross domestic product on defense. In 2016 only five hit the target, and one of those was the United States.
Mr. Starmer, who is under pressure in Britain to say when he will raise spending to 2.5 percent of G.D.P., this week announced a strategic defense review, with work starting immediately “in recognition of the urgency of the threats facing the U.K.”
Still, given the international backdrop, Europe’s most powerful military nations, including France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Britain, may need to go further in bolstering their security cooperation.
The Blenheim meeting could show what Britain’s rapprochement with its continental allies can unlock, Ms. Gaston said. “We will see both opportunities from that effectiveness and good will,” she said, “and also see some of the realities and limitations.”
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