Liz Truss set to attend meeting of French president’s European club

Liz Truss is set to attend a meeting of the European Political Community, after days of weighing up whether to attend the summit in Prague.

The PA news agency understands that the Prime Minister wanted to attend because energy and migration, both on the agenda of the meeting, are two of her priorities and that she sees the need to work with other European leaders to resolve the issues.

The move to attend the meeting of the group – French President Emmanuel Macron’s scheme to bring together EU nations and countries outside the bloc – will raise eyebrows given Ms Truss’s explicit scepticism about the project only a few months ago as foreign secretary.

The meeting will take place in early October and the decision to attend comes as the Prime Minister faces political and economic turmoil at home after Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini-budget spooked markets and shocked mainstream economists over its £45 billion of tax cuts.

It has been reported that Number 10 had been pondering whether to attend the meeting in recent weeks, with European Union ambassador Joao Vale de Almeida using an appearance at a fringe meeting at the Labour Party conference in Liverpool to urge Ms Truss to attend.

News website Politico, which first reported Ms Truss’s planned attendance, also she was willing to host the next summit of the political group in London.

The decision to attend comes with the EU and the UK still deadlocked over the Northern Ireland Protocol, with the Government’s plan to rip up the post-Brexit arrangements in the region causing major ill-feeling between London and Brussels.

Ms Truss is seeking to strike a rapport with European leaders including European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen and Mr Macron after meeting the pair at a UN summit in New York.

It comes after Ms Truss courted controversy during the Tory leadership contest by answering “the jury’s out” on whether Mr Macron was “friend or foe”.

As foreign secretary in June, she also said she did not “buy into” a Europe-wide political community.