The fourth summit of the European Political Community (EPC) met in Blenheim Palace, England on Thursday, with more than 45 European leaders present.

Following last week’s NATO summit in Washington D.C., the EPC was tasked with escalating NATO’s plans for direct military conflict with Russia.

The EPC’s inaugural summit was held in October 2022 at the initiative of French President Emmanuel Macron, bringing together European Union (EU) countries, Britain, and a dozen countries along Russia’s western border. Since then the political crisis facing Europe’s leaders has intensified, with the Zelensky regime in Ukraine suffering a series of disastrous military set-backs.

Macron is widely hated as a warmongering “president of the rich”, hanging onto power thanks to the New Popular Front coalition of France Unbowed, the Socialist Party, the Greens and the Stalinist Communist Party of France.

The latest summit was first announced in March by then Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak as coming “at an important moment in efforts to galvanise support for Ukraine as fighting is expected to intensify in the summer.”

Less than four months later, the Conservatives have been replaced by a Labour government that is even more staunchly pro-war.

Sir Keir Starmer’s government said it would utilise the EPC for a “reset” with the EU’s main powers, after years of rancour following the 2016 Brexit referendum. But this “reset” centred on seeking an agreement on waging war with Russia and a stepped-up assault on asylum seekers and refugees.

The government boasted, “For the first time at a meeting of the EPC, NATO, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe and the Council of Europe will be in attendance, demonstrating the importance of unity in response to the arc of conflict and instability inside and near Europe’s borders that affects the UK and the continent’s interests equally.”

Opening the first plenary, Starmer said, “We want to work with all of you to reset relationships… because our security is on the line.”

“So our first task here today is to confirm our steadfast support for Ukraine… and to say, we will face down aggression on this continent together. Because the threat from Russia reaches right across Europe,” he added.

Starmer was “proud of Britain’s role in maintaining European security. Through NATO, through the Joint Expeditionary Force, and more, we stand together. We guard Europe’s frontiers.”

During the general election campaign, Labour laid out its credentials to Britain’s ruling elite as a trusted party of war. Starmer told the summit that this meant “Firing up our industries” and “meeting, not just the military challenge but the challenge to our economic, cyber and energy security as well.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s assigned role at the summit was to further the isolation of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Hungary has assumed the rotational six-month presidency of the European Union Council but is being boycotted by the European Commission after making trips to Moscow and Beijing in the last two weeks.

In Moscow, Orban stated it was necessary to “start a dialogue on the shortest road to peace.” He also visited US Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump, after which he wrote to European Council president Charles Michel and other EU leaders that “Shortly after his [Trump’s] election victory, he will not wait until his inauguration, [he] will be ready to act as a peace broker immediately. He has detailed and well-founded plans for this.”

Zelensky, without naming Orban who was present, told the summit, “If someone wants to make some trips to the capital of war to talk and perhaps promise something against our common interest, or at the expense of Ukraine or other countries, then why should we consider such a person?” The European Union and NATO “can also address all their issues without this one individual.”

Orban was also denounced, again without being named, by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who was in Brussels where MEPs were voting on whether she had another term in office. Speaking to MEPs, von der Leyen called Orban’s Moscow visit “nothing but an appeasement mission.”

However, Orban is not alone in opposing a continued war with Moscow—with other far-right parties which gained substantially in the recent European elections—opposing a resolution in in the European Parliament calling for more support for Ukraine and denouncing Orban’s trips. The resolution was backed by 495 votes in favour, but with 137 votes against, and 47 abstentions. Opposing were most MEPs from the Patriots for Europe—including its president, Jordan Bardella of France's Nationally Rally—and the Europe of Sovereign Nations (ESN) group. The ESN is dominated by the neo-fascist Alternative for Germany (AfD).

The New York Times cited Sophia Gaston, head of foreign policy at the Policy Exchange think tank, commenting that a possible second Trump presidency was the “elephant in the room”. There was “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.”

Trump has named as his vice presidential running mate J. D. Vance, who is outspoken in his opposition to the continuation of the war against Russia as a drain on NATO’s resources and with the US having to foot the bill. He considers the war an obstacle to fighting more important conflicts, particularly against China. He stated recently that the US does not “make enough munitions to support a war in Eastern Europe, a war in the Middle East, and potentially a contingency in East Asia”.

The escalation of war against Russia was coupled together with the extension of “Fortress Europe” and the war against asylum seekers and refugees. This was made clear in the pledge that “The UK government will use the summit to discuss closer collaboration to tackle illegal immigration and greater security cooperation with European counterparts to keep Britain safe.”

A centrepiece of Starmer’s King’s Speech legislative programme this week was its commitment to extending counter-terror laws to crack down on “illegal immigration” into Britain.

Among the filthiest aspects of the summit was Starmer’s lauding of Italy’s fascist Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni as the greatest fighter against “illegal immigration”, as he pontificated about human rights and the “dignity” of all human beings. A meeting with Meloni was one of the series of bilateral meetings Starmer held throughout the day.

Meloni was also tasked with hosting a breakout session on illegal immigration, attended by Starmer, and chaired by Albanian leader Edi Rama, whose government specialises in locking up asylum seekers in detention camps and which “processes” them in an offshore agreement with Italy.

Closing the summit, Starmer said “resetting our approach” on “illegal migration… had been central today”. In reply to a question, Starmer said that although he had ended Conservative government plans to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda—stating that this was an expensive gimmick—he was prepared to look at setting up a similar operation to Italy’s agreement with Albania. “I’ve always said we’ll look at what works and where cases can be processed closer to origin, then that is something which of course ought to be looked at.”

“We are going to secure our borders,” Starmer declared. Claiming that the problem would also be tackled “at source”, he said of countries in the Middle East and Africa devastated by imperialist war and poverty as the result of western oppression that the princely sum of £84 million would be made available to support job opportunities and education programmes so that people would not have to leave their homelands for Europe!

As with the NATO summit, the EPC was a gigantic conspiracy against Europe’s population to promote a war that no one voted for and which no one wants, with the danger of an escalation into a nuclear conflict with Russia and China threatening the end of humanity.