With the G20 meeting in Hamburg about to get going, reporters in Brussels were more interested in the collapse of talks in Switzerland on the reunification of Cyprus.
The European Commission said it regretted that the 10-day talks had failed but it would continue to provide political and technical support when the search for agreement continues.
Alexander Winterstein, the Commission’s deputy spokesman, wasn’t keen on answering a question about whether the EU’s complex relationships with Turkey in recent months played a part in the talks collapsing. He also said that even though Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan are both at the G20, there won’t be a special meeting on Cyprus held at the Hamburg summit.
Next week
Juncker will on Monday meet with former Commissioner for Competition Joaquín Almunia and with Michael Peters, the CEO of Euronews, which receives cash from the EU budget and has formed a partnership with U.S. media group NBC.
Juncker and Commission First Vice President Frans Timmermans will meet with new Romanian Prime Minister Mihai Tudose on Tuesday. The Commission chief will head to Ukraine for an EU-Ukraine summit later next week.
The full agenda can be found here.