Finnish president warns Europe faces new Yalta or Helsinki moment

Good morning. My sole observation from the Munich Security Conference this past weekend is simple: Europe is in grave trouble. The US and Russia are negotiating a peace deal over our heads, Donald Trump’s administration sees us as a cultural adversary, and is putting into question its commitments to Nato allies.

EU Council president António Costa told the Financial Times in Munich that Europe must be involved in negotiations with Russia in order to build a new European security architecture reflecting Moscow’s “global threat”. This evening in Paris, he will gather with other senior European leaders at a crisis meeting that reflects the continent’s dire predicament.

Here, Finland’s President Alexander Stubb tells me the shifting geopolitical tectonic plates could either produce a new Yalta or Helsinki moment. Plus, the EU’s health commissioner tells our trade correspondent that Brussels wants joint purchasing of medicines.

Endgame

Europe is facing a decisive moment that will determine the continent’s future, Finland’s President Alexander Stubb has warned.

Context: US President Donald Trump has begun peace talks with Russia’s Vladimir Putin to end the war in Ukraine, excluding European capitals. His administration has ruled out Ukraine joining Nato, and said Kyiv should forget about recapturing territory invaded by Moscow.

“This is the Yalta versus Helsinki moment. Yalta was a carve-up of big powers at that time: Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin who crafted a European security structure based on spheres of interests,” Stubb told the FT.

“The other option is a Helsinki moment, in 1975 when there was a clear settling of how nation states behave towards each other, which later became the three key principles of statehood: independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity,” he added.

The Yalta conference, named after its venue in then-Soviet Crimea, saw the US, USSR and UK redraw the map of Europe, dividing Germany and granting Moscow influence over what became the Warsaw Pact countries. It enabled the cold war, during which the USSR repeatedly violated the independence and territorial integrity of the Warsaw Pact countries.

Those principles were reaffirmed in the 1975 Helsinki accords, helping to ease cold war tensions.

European capitals have been denied a direct role in the Ukraine peace negotiations. The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, is set to meet his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, in Saudi Arabia this week in the first formal stage of talks. Ukraine has also not been invited.

During the emergency talks in Paris today, leaders will attempt to formulate a joint response to the US-Russia negotiations.

“I want this to be, instead of an 80-year old Yalta moment, a 50-year old Helsinki moment,” Stubb said. “[Now] it’s somewhere in-between. Some of the processes that are ongoing are Yalta. But hopefully the end result is Helsinki.”

Chart du jour: Look up

The world’s skies are becoming crowded, posing a risk to airlines as rockets, drones, and “flying taxis” in the near future begin to use airspace.

Stocking up

One of the many hangovers of the Covid-19 crisis is a shortage of medicines. To resolve the issue, the EU wants to revisit a pandemic-era solution: joint purchasing, writes Andy Bounds.

Context: There are shortages of more than 30 drugs in the EU, according to the European Medicines Agency, including for instance salbutamol, a common asthma inhaler formula, and amoxicillin, an antibiotic.

During the height of the pandemic in 2021, the European Commission procured vaccines on behalf of EU countries, ensuring equal access and prices. EU health commissioner Olivér Várhelyi wants to repeat the trick in a new Critical Medicines Act next month, he told the FT in an interview.

Várhelyi said that pooling purchases would be incentivised but not mandatory, and officials were still working on the system’s design.

“Through the Critical Medicines Act, we can create joint procurement as a permanent tool to create market incentives to get the new products on the market as fast as we can,” Várhelyi said.

Health remains a national responsibility and there are big differences in the medicines available in large wealthy member states such as Germany, and small poorer ones such as Latvia.

A blockbuster reform package, which would impose penalties if drugs are not marketed in all 27 member states, is stalled. Countries with pharmaceutical industries say it would reduce investment.

Várhelyi believes there is a false contest between innovation and access. “These are not mutually exclusive. We can do both,” he said, citing joint purchasing as a solution.

“We can create a market in those member states where there is a problem of access. But we could also create the market for new products. Europe needs, for example, a new generation of antibiotics,” he said.

What to watch today

1. Leaders of France, Germany, the UK, Italy, Poland, Spain, the Netherlands and Denmark plus the EU and Nato, hold talks in Paris.

2. Keith Kellogg, US special envoy for Ukraine, visits Nato headquarters.

3. Eurogroup meets.

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