Europe’s Minilateral Moment

16 Dec 2025 01:04 PM

The rise of ‘minilateral’ Europe now stands at a crossroads. Will countries seek to structure the new ad hoc formats to retain a distinct European security community, or risk further fragmentation?

Europe is experiencing a ‘minilateral’ revolution as its leaders huddle up with trusted neighbours and partners across the continent to build defence and security relationships. This political shift is driven by the twin challenges of growing threats, notably from Russia, and hostility from the Trump administration, which together have forced Europe’s leaders to look for new ways to assert leadership.

On a 18 November 2025, Prime Minister Starmer flew to Berlin for a dinner meeting with his German and French counterparts in the E3 format, a grouping originally established to represent Europe in nuclear negotiations with Iran. Ultimately, there was little media coverage of the meeting other than noting that the leaders discussed the situations in Ukraine, the Middle East and Iran, as well as economic issues. Leaders expressed support for working together on foreign and security policy, and highlighted cooperation with Poland and Italy. The E5 – a group having been set up earlier in 2025 to bring together the continent’s largest defence actors – had met days earlier at the defence minister’s level (plus EU High Representative) to coordinate support for Ukraine.

The E3 Berlin discussions were soon overtaken by the emergence of a US-Russia peace proposal to end Russia’s war against Ukraine. Yet the E3 mechanism has been at the core of the various European political consultations to cobble together a response, with the national security advisers of France, Germany and the UK (plus Italy) attending the Geneva discussions on the peace proposal and the three leaders coordinating (with Ukraine) the drafting of an alternative (European) peace plan. Alongside the E3, the Coalition of the Willing, a group convened by the UK and France, involving 31 – primarily European – countries provided key support. At the same time, the Nordic Baltic Eight issued their own separate statement on the peace proposal.

This emergence of sub-groupings of European leaders on foreign and security policy is not a new development. The frequency of such meetings has, though, become supercharged recently and there has been a proliferation of ad hoc formats as Europe’s security crisis has escalated. Fundamentally, the new turn to minilateralism is a response to the difficulties that Europe is experiencing in asserting political leadership on foreign and defence issues through existing multilateral formats faced with a more hostile international environment and growing uncertainty of the US commitment.

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