Good morning, I’m Jack Power, Europe correspondent for The Irish Times, filling in today for Denis Staunton while he is away.
When ministers meet to talk politics in Brussels, a senior diplomat is usually by their side. That’s how the officials like it. They get nervous on the rare occasions when EU policy discussions are designated as “ministers only”, leaving diplomats outside the room where the action happens.
That’ll be the case next week at a “Gymnich” meeting bringing together the 27 foreign ministers in Wicklow.
Styled as a more informal, free-flowing chat twice a year, the idea is for foreign ministers to knock about their thoughts on the big questions of the day, without the pressure of having to negotiate any firm decisions involving messy compromises.
The first Gymnich of foreign ministers took place in 1974 in Erftstadt, near Bonn, western Germany, at the instigation of then German foreign minister Walter Scheel. The fallout from the 1970s oil crisis and the Vietnam War were on the agenda.
The get-together was held in Gymnich castle, a 14th-century chateau with a moat that belonged to Rhineland nobility. At a certain point, Scheel ushered his fellow ministers – plus their spouses, who had been invited to attend a dinner – down to the cellars of the castle for a singsong.
The informal meetings of EU foreign ministers have been known as a Gymnich since then.
It falls to the government holding the rotating Council of the EU presidency to host. Ireland is bringing all the union’s foreign ministers to Druids Glen hotel in Wicklow next week for it. UK foreign secretary Ed Miliband has been invited to join the discussion as well.
The venue was pencilled in when Simon Harris thought he would be welcoming the visiting politicians to his constituency backyard, before he swapped the foreign affairs gig for the finance job.
Foreign ministers who travelled to Copenhagen for a Gymnich last year left with a particularly unusual gift. The Danish foreign ministry commissioned sets of gold pens crafted from recycled Ukrainian bullet casings.
A Gymnich scheduled by chief obstructor Viktor Orbán’s far-right government in Budapest was snubbed in 2024. Josep Borrell, the EU’s high representative on foreign affairs, arranged an informal meeting of ministers in Brussels instead. The move was a pointed protest over the way Orbán was abusing Hungary’s position during its turn at the EU presidency, to undermine the bloc’s common stance supporting Ukraine.
Ireland staged one of the first foreign policy brainstorming sessions during the Republic’s presidency in 1975, two years after joining what was then the European Economic Community.
At the time Farmleigh estate was owned by the Guinness family (the State purchased the property in 1999), but Garret FitzGerald reportedly swung it so the government of the day had use of the Phoenix Park mansion for a Gymnich dinner.
The agenda in Wicklow next week will span the war in Ukraine, Iran and the blocked Strait of Hormuz, a debate about stalled EU action against Israel, plus a chat about how to improve Europe’s influence in world affairs.
Economies are feeling the energy crisis pinch. Violent settlers are emboldened in the West Bank. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy needs more air defence missiles than Europe has to spare, or money to buy them, and there have been murmurings of US-backed peace negotiations resuming as well. Plenty to talk about.
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