Europe has talked its way into the room. What it will say once it is there is the harder question.
The talks in Abu Dhabi were first planned as a meeting between the United States, Russia and Ukraine. Rustem Umerov, head of Ukraine's foreign intelligence service, leads Kyiv's delegation. Russia sends deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov and Kremlin aide Vladimir Medinsky. Now, according to people briefed on the plans, the national security advisers of France, Germany and the UK will take part in sections of the talks, together with the chiefs of staff to Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and to NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte. EU ambassadors were due to receive details at a Coreper meeting on Monday morning.
The trigger was Washington. Last week Trump promised a "very big" deal that would cover all of Europe, and Kushner talked about a broader European security architecture that could help establish the conditions for lasting peace. European capitals say nobody consulted them in advance. Russia has long wanted a say over NATO exercises, deployments and weapons in eastern Europe, which Europeans read as a return to spheres of influence.
France's foreign minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, said on Sunday that no discussion about the future of the continent can ignore European demands. The line Europe is drawing is about sequence. Talks on the continent's security order beyond Ukraine, governments say, must follow a peace deal with Kyiv, not run alongside it. The European focus in Abu Dhabi will be security guarantees for Ukraine and a postwar recovery package. Kushner has said the US will consult Europeans "on the sidelines" and that, if talks progress, Europeans could take part directly.
The deeper weakness is the one Giorgia Meloni named in her letter to Council President António Costa last week: whoever sits for Europe does so without a clear mandate. What does Europe offer Russia for a ceasefire? Where are the red lines of France, Germany and the UK on a security order that is Europe's own business? Those questions have no agreed answers. Until now the E3 has led on security guarantees, with the EU handling economic reconstruction and membership at the margins. Italy and Poland are unhappy with the arrangement, and several capitals doubt Meloni's push for a single EU interlocutor by the end of the year.
Meanwhile, the war goes on. Ukraine and Russia exchanged heavy strikes over the weekend, with Russian attacks on Ukrainian power infrastructure, and Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned of a shortage of Western air-defence interceptors. Territory and security guarantees remain the main disagreements.
Showing up is not the same as having leverage. If Europeans arrive without a joint position, Moscow and Washington can play them against each other, and a deal on the continent's security could be written around them. The test comes on Friday in Dublin. Leaders can either name who speaks for the EU and on what terms, or leave the E3, Brussels and the Italians to compete for the microphone. Watch who actually sits in the room on Tuesday, and whether the word "architecture" shows up in any US-Russian text before Europe has agreed what it wants.
