By Pasquale Preziosa and Robbin Laird
Giorgia Meloni’s November 5 letter to European Council President António Costa is less a plea for one EU envoy than a demand to know who may commit Europe to what. She asked that leaders take up the question at the informal summit in Dublin next week, and that the December European Council formalize a decision after consulting the United Kingdom, Norway and other European partners.
She said she wants no seat for herself or for Italy. What she will not accept is commitments being negotiated on Italy’s behalf without an agreed mandate. That is the clause to read twice. Europe has an indispensable role in three distinct areas: security guarantees, reconstruction and Ukraine’s EU accession. The first two also involve the United States and other international partners; accession is a matter for Ukraine and the EU. Meloni made the same point about the US peace plan a year ago.
Her evidence is a list of recent meetings. Her main example is a Miami session of national security advisers from some European states, with Ukraine and NATO and EU representatives, which she says US sources confirmed only afterward. Her conclusion is that a Europe moving in many formats cannot be relied on, and that disarray serves those who want the war to continue.
The letter is aimed at Brussels, Paris, Berlin and London as much as at Washington. That shapes everything that follows.
Not a new campaign
Meloni has argued for a single European envoy since January. At her January 9 press conference she said Europe should talk to Russia and proposed an envoy so that contact would not be reopened haphazardly. The idea itself is older: Finland’s Alexander Stubb floated it almost a year earlier, and Meloni’s ally Giovanbattista Fazzolari named Mario Draghi as a candidate.
EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas has resisted from the start. In January she said Putin should make concessions before any direct talks. By June she argued that the EU cannot act as mediator because it has taken Ukraine’s side.
The push peaked in June. On June 11 Meloni told parliament Europe needs a figure with the mandate of all member states, adding that coordination is not delegation. Days earlier she had been left out of a London meeting of Starmer, Macron and Merz. After the Évian G7 she said the envoy should come from a medium-sized country, not one of the largest.
Then Costa’s own office opened a channel to the Kremlin at the June summit, which complicated matters. Some leaders saw Costa as the natural envoy under the Treaties, while Italian reporting says Meloni stayed out of that dispute and kept preferring a figure from outside the largest states, such as Stubb. Italy’s foreign minister, Antonio Tajani, pressed the same line: designate a spokesman so that formats limited to a few countries could end.
What is new in November is the form: a written, formal request, a December deadline, and an explicit appeal to coordinate with London and Oslo.
Italy and the changing negotiating formats
The sequence of formats since October explains her irritation. Trump envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner hosted the Miami talks on October 9 and 10 with Ukrainian negotiators, national security advisers from Britain, France and Germany, and NATO and EU representatives. Italy was not among the national seats. Italy subsequently participated in the Oslo talks, alongside Britain and Germany. This changing composition raises a broader question about whom each format represents and with what authority.
The EU side was thin. Euronews reported that Miami and a later round in Oslo included only Bjoern Seibert, von der Leyen’s chief of cabinet, for the EU institutions. It is still unclear whether the Commission and the Council would both have a place at the table.
On November 4 the Commission itself hosted a session in Brussels with Ukraine, France, Germany, the UK, the US, NATO and the World Bank on Ukraine’s reconstruction and prosperity, with national security advisers and senior officials attending. A NATO session on security guarantees with representatives from France, Germany, the UK and the US was also confirmed. Witkoff has announced trilateral talks in Abu Dhabi on November 10 and 11, so the letter lands days before the next round.
Reconstruction is where the exclusion stings
Italy hosted the 2025 Ukraine Recovery Conference in Rome, where Italy, Germany, France, Poland and the Commission announced a recovery fund with a fundraising target of €1 billion. Italy helped build the instrument, yet neither the Miami meeting nor the Brussels session lists Italy among the participants.
Capitals beyond Rome also have reason to want a strong EU presence. Euronews noted that Trump’s diesel supply deal with Putin and the easing of some Russia sanctions alarmed European capitals and reinforced the case for the EU at the table as a counterweight to Washington.
What the letter gives her at home
Meloni writes from a weaker domestic position than a year ago, and with a different relationship to Washington. After US strikes on Iran began in late February, she distanced herself from Trump, cautiously at first. Her government then lost a March referendum on judicial reform, and she denied a Sicilian air base to US planes carrying weapons for the Iran war.
Trump answered in April by saying he was “shocked” by her. Reuters reported that 66 percent of Italians hold a negative view of Trump, and that pollsters think her White House ties may have contributed to the referendum defeat. In June, after further attacks from Trump, she told him that her popularity was none of his concern.
Against that background the letter does three things for her. This is our reading, not a claim about her motives.
It turns exclusion into a sovereignty argument. She can object to being sidelined by the E3 formats and by US-convened channels on grounds of representation and consent. The same logic she applied to Washington now applies to Paris, Berlin and London.
It offers a process she can win without a name. Italian government sources told TASS in June that Rome has no specific candidate. A December decision on an envoy lets her claim authorship whether the job goes to Costa, Stubb or someone else.
It gives her a basis to challenge commitments negotiated on Italy’s behalf without its consent. Meloni has said repeatedly that Italy will not send soldiers to Ukraine. A common EU negotiating mandate would not replace national decisions on troops, funding and security commitments.
The gain has limits. Her party, Brothers of Italy, still led with 28.1 percent in a June polling average, but LUISS professor Roberto D’Alimonte expects a difficult final stretch before the 2027 elections, largely because of the Iran war’s energy costs. Her coalition partner the Lega has publicly opposed any Ukrainian path into the EU, so the Ukraine line she defends in Brussels is not uniform at home.
A single representative can make a shared European policy more effective, but the appointment alone cannot create that policy. The December decision will matter if it connects a clear negotiating mandate with commitments that European institutions and national governments are prepared to carry out.