LIVE: Countdown to the EU's next seven-year budget
A Live Blog Posting is a Blog Posting intended to provide a rolling textual coverage of an ongoing event through continuous updates.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is set to present the bloc's next seven-year budget – the multiannual financial framework or MFF – on 16 July.
Euractiv dives deep into what's going on and what that means for the future of Europe – from agrifood to tech, from defence to the economy.
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The first German-British friendship treaty revives an old European axis – one of many among a growing alphabet soup of subgroups. Euractiv is part of the Trust Project Nick Alipour Euractiv Jul 17, 2025 06:00 6 min. read Analysis Based on factual reporting, although it Incorporates the expertise of the author/producer and may offer interpretations and conclusions. BERLIN – On paper, Germany is set to sign its first-ever bilateral friendship treaty with the UK on Thursday. In reality, it's just one side of a bigger structure. German government officials have stressed that they see the yet-unnamed document as completing the triangle of friendship treaties among Germany, France, and the UK – otherwise known as the E3. That may be partly to alleviate the FOMO of the French, who have been watching the negotiations with suspicion, wary that bilateral agreements might sidestep EU policy. 'When your two best friends make plans without you, you're bound to take a close look,' a French diplomat told Euractiv last autumn. But more broadly, their concern reflects Europe's growing reliance on flexible groupings of influential states to drive decisions and bypass blockades among the unwieldy EU-27. Alas, the resulting inflation in acronyms – including the E3, E4, G5 and various Weimar formats – is thus a sign of the bloc's dysfunction. And it hardly offers a sustainable solution. Mini-lateral momentum Europe's diversity has long been a catalyst for the formation of smaller, interest-driven subgroups, from Visegrád, which champions the interests of Central and Eastern European countries, to MED9, coordinating the positions of Mediterranean countries . But a select few are defined by their weight, with an elite class of groupings formed around the EU's largest countries seeking to influence the bloc's direction. "With 27 EU countries around the table, it is difficult to reach decisions sometimes,' said one European diplomat. "Larger states can come together more quickly and steer the EU.' A second diplomat compared groups like the Weimar Triangle – a post-Cold War platform between Germany, France, and Poland, named after its inaugural meeting location – to the Group of 7 (G7), used by the world's developed economies to steer global politics. At the centre of nearly all these alliances is the Franco-German tandem – a 'hereditary enmity' that has grown into a deep partnership driven by the horrors of the Second World War. In the 1990s, the pair made up nearly 60% of the bloc's GDP and about 45% of its population. Today, following the EU's enlargement, their share in the EU's GDP has dropped to below half by 2023, prompting both to gradually widen the tandem, most notably, to include Poland. D-Day Subgroups like the Weimar Triangle and the E3 (which originally emerged from talks on the Iranian nuclear programme) have since convened at increasing frequency, even more so in recent months. But the spark that caused the explosion in European subgroups came on 6 November 2024, the day after Donald Trump won the US presidential elections for the second time. The same day, German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius rushed to see his French counterpart Sébastien Lecornu in Paris, haunted by the prospect of an erratic American president and his impact on Europe's security architecture. They were joined by the defence ministers of Italy, Britain, and Poland – completing the group of Europe's largest defence spenders, who have since called themselves the Group of Five (G5). Just two weeks later, the foreign ministers of those five countries, plus Spain and the EU, followed their example, launching what is now known as 'Weimar Plus,' named such because the first three meetings took place in the Weimar capitals. Subgroups have kept multiplying since. The so-called Coalition of the Willing emerged as a 30-odd-member group focused on Ukraine's post-war security. Shortly after came a yet-to-be-named informal quartet (sometimes dubbed the E4), which comprises Germany's Friedrich Merz, France's Emmanuel Macron, Britain's Keir Starmer, and Poland's Donald Tusk. America's retreat from Europe's and Ukraine's security architecture required European leaders to step up, said Yann Wernert, a political scientist at the Jacques Delors Centre. The absence of EU competences, resources, and institutions on foreign policy – and more limited influence of the Franco-German tandem and Weimar Triangle – forced them to recur to new intergovernmental ad-hoc formats, he said. Another reason behind the proliferation: "Britain must be closely integrated into European structures in terms of security policy, in particular, after Brexit,' said one former German diplomat, who champions the E4 format. The groupings have "facilitated a relatively coherent approach by European leaders to the Trump administration since January,' said Rafael Loss, a political scientist at the European Council on Foreign Relations. They have succeeded 'in making a European voice heard and in articulating common interests,' Wernert agreed. On their first outing, the E4 managed to briefly seemed to impress Russian President Vladimir Putin after a joint phone call with Trump, when they threatened to impose American-backed sanctions if Moscow didn't commit to a ceasefire. Putin's willingness to negotiate collapsed, however, when America signalled it wasn't on board. Still, the first European diplomat called the approach 'a sweet poison." On the one hand, it allows larger states to quickly find common positions, they said. On the other hand, it risks 'undermining the EU's federal institutions," especially given its focus on the UK, a non-member. Format fatigue But while these mini-laterals have streamlined communication, they have so far failed to deliver tangible results. In its heyday, the Franco-German tandem brought about the single market and a joint currency, together with Britain. By contrast, even very modest efforts like the 'Weimar Agenda' – a roadmap for EU foreign policy reform unveiled in May 2024 – have fizzled out. In that regard, the subgroups have been dogged by what has long haunted visions of smaller EU subgroups charging forward with integration. 'That presupposes that France and Germany agree, and they don't agree,' a former French government official remarked – an issue that extends to Poland, let alone the Weimar Plus. Loss noted that 'Macron, Merz, and Tusk lack a shared vision for the EU, but do share extremely challenging domestic circumstances at home," thwarting progress in areas other than foreign policy. Worse still, the increasing number of formats has prompted haggling over seats at the table. When US President Biden visited Berlin last year, Chancellor Olaf Scholz invited only E3 leaders – excluding Poland's Tusk, which raised eyebrows in Warsaw. "The chancellors' advisors said that otherwise Giorgia Meloni would also have had to be invited," said the former German diplomat, calling it a "disastrous signal" and a "weak" excuse. In more absurd moments, the format inflation has caused confusion rather than clarity. Italy, for example, continues to refer to the G5 as E5, which other countries have reserved for the foreign ministers of Germany, France, Poland, Britain, and Spain. The alphabet soup of E3, E4, E5, and G5 has led to what one Polish diplomat called groups that 'sound like food additives.' Ultimately, the first European diplomat concluded, the formalisation of constructs like the Weimar Triangle is mostly 'suitable for Sunday speech' but lacks actual cultural grounding, which makes them fleeting and purpose-bound, rather than a panacea. Still, they are here to stay. They have found an enthusiastic supporter in Merz, the German chancellor, who is likely to use the E4 in particular as a tool to cohesively deal with Ukraine and the US, the diplomat added. (mm) Euractiv is part of the Trust Project
