What to know as European leaders meet in Dublin to discuss Ukraine's security, and their own

DUBLIN (AP) — Leaders from more than 40 European countries are gathering in Dublin on Thursday for a summit focused on the continent’s fragile security, amid a new U.S.-backed effort to revive talks on ending the Russia-Ukraine war .

The meeting of the European Political Community brings together heads of state and government from the European Union and other European countries including the U.K., as well as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte.

Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin said the EPC allowed European leaders “to come together to advance the security, stability and prosperity of our continent.”

“It was established as part of the collective European response to growing regional and global political instability, and to bring more coherence to challenges we face across our continent,” he said as he welcomed Zelenskyy to Dublin on Wednesday.

The summit is an opportunity for Zelenskyy and European allies to digest the result of this week's U.S.-mediated talks in Abu Dhabi on the almost five-year-old Russia-Ukraine war. American envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner are expected to meet Zelenskyy in Dublin after talking to Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Thursday.

The EPC is the brainchild of French President Emmanuel Macron and former German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, and was established in 2022 as a forum for countries both inside and outside the 27-nation EU after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine shattered Europe’s sense of security.

Zelenskyy routinely attends, and the war in his country often dominates talks.

The grouping that unites almost 50 nations across Europe, barring Russia and Belarus, also became a forum for European security discussion after U.S. President Donald Trump returned to office in 2024. He alarmed European leaders with his insults to NATO allies and threats to take control of Greenland, a semiautonomous territory of Denmark.

Carney’s attendance is a sign of his desire to bring Canada closer to Europe after Trump launched a trade war with the United States’ northern neighbor and repeatedly talked about making it the 51st state.

U.K. Prime Minister Andy Burnham is also seeking closer ties with the European Union, almost six years after Britain left the EU. The EPC gives Britain the chance to join a Europe-wide political gathering , despite Brexit.

The group meets twice a year, once in an EU country and once outside the bloc. The next gathering is due to be held in April in Zurich, Switzerland.

Critics claim the forum was an attempt to put the brakes on EU enlargement by offering a seat at a big European table without the advantages of membership.

Others believe it has become a talking shop, devoid of any real clout or content. Its meetings don’t make binding decisions or produce formal declarations.

The meeting comes at a moment of political upheaval in Europe, and days after a rout of Republicans in the U.S. midterm elections weakened Trump’s hold on the levers of power, at least domestically. It remains to be seen whether the setback will alter Trump’s approach to the war in Ukraine and the conflict with Iran that he started.

Populist leaders have recently been ousted in Serbia and in Hungary, and the European Union and Britain are rebuilding ties, a decade after Britons voted to leave the bloc.

But the hard right is still on the rise in Europe, having recently made gains in regional elections in Germany. Voters in several of the continent’s biggest countries — Spain, France, Italy and Poland — all go to the polls in the weeks and months ahead.

Beyond Ukraine, security discussions will focus on the hybrid threat across Europe from Russia, which has been accused of launching disruptive attacks on key infrastructure that fall below the threshold of war.

A year ago in Copenhagen , the leaders focused on a series of worrying drone incidents across Europe. In the days before this week's meeting, airlines and media outlets in several European countries were hit with hoax bomb threats . Among the targets of the disruption were Irish airline Ryanair and the country’s national broadcaster, RTE.

European nations have not formally assigned blame for the threats.

The Irish government said the EPC is the "largest ever gathering of international leaders" held in Ireland, and the largest policing and security operation in the 100-year history of its national police force, the Garda Síochána.

Associated Press writer Lorne Cook in Brussels contributed to this story.