Italian PM Meloni calls Paris summit "anti-Trump"

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who took part in the summit of European leaders in Paris, has called the meeting "anti-Trump".

Italian news agency ANSA reports that Meloni was the last to arrive at the meeting of the leaders when the negotiations had been going on for an hour.

After the summit, the Italian prime minister expressed disagreement with the summit's proposals and the list of invitees.

She said that Brussels should have been the only place for the 27 EU member states to make joint decisions.

In addition, she stressed that the meetings could not be held in an "anti-Trump format".

"The United States is working to achieve peace, and we have a role to play," Meloni added.

She also noted that without adequate "security guarantees" for Kyiv, any negotiations risk failing.

Therefore, Meloni called for "exploring other avenues" and, above all, engaging the United States since, in her words, "it is in the Euro-Atlantic context that European and American security is based".

An emergency summit was held in Paris on the evening of 17 February, convened by French President Emmanuel Macron after Keith Kellogg, US President Donald Trump’s special envoy on Russia and Ukraine, stated that the United States does not see Europe at the negotiating table for ending the Russian-Ukrainian war. 

Following the meeting in Paris, Macron briefed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on its outcomes.

Commenting on the outcome of the summit, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said that it was only a prelude to the events of the coming weeks.