Cleo Davies / Sep 2025
Photo: Shutterstock
Barely two weeks go by without a bilateral meeting between Keir Starmer and a leader from a European capital. He hosted his Irish and Spanish counterparts in Downing Street on 12 September and 3 September respectively, having welcomed the French president, the German chancellor and the Czech prime minister in July.
Leader-to-leader summitry and high-level political diplomacy have characterised the Starmer government’s bilateral engagement with EU member states from the get-go. After a year, Starmer has successfully built personal relationships with EU leaders well beyond those of Ireland, France, Germany and Poland, the four countries singled out in the Labour party’s 2024 general election manifesto.
Starmer’s investment in high level diplomacy with strategic partners across the EU contrasts with his predecessors since the UK left the EU.
Johnson entertained very tensed relations with his EU counterparts. He presided over a low point in relations with the UK’s closest neighbours, chief of which Ireland and France – only redeeming some of his personal leadership credentials following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, in particular with the Baltics and Nordics. Sunak took a narrow and somewhat disinterested approach and only invested political capital into his relationship with Italian prime minister Georgia Meloni over their shared concern for tackling irregular migration. In the past three months, Starmer has hosted as many European counterparts in Downing Street as Sunak did during his entire premiership[1].
Starmer’s ability to establish personal relationships with European leaders is significant in two ways. First, it has allowed for making progress in bilateral cooperation in key strategic areas for the UK. The UK has signed significant security and defence treaties with Germany, Poland, and Romania amongst others. Starmer also succeeded in securing an embryonic migrant return deal with France where his predecessors had failed. The UK prime minister is also invested in the relationship with his Irish counterpart. He has hosted the Taoiseach multiple times in Downing Street and was the first UK prime minister to officially visit Dublin since 2019. After a first ever UK-Ireland Summit in March 2025, Starmer and Martin unveiled a Joint Framework on addressing the legacy of the Troubles at their most recent meeting in September 2025. These initiatives are clear indications of Starmer’s intent to go beyond mere diplomatic niceties to build a trusting cooperation.
Secondly, in a geopolitical context that has deteriorated even more since the election of Trump in the US, Starmer’s approach has ensured the UK can provide the leadership role it seeks and that others want from it in response to Russia’s war on Ukraine and security threat to Europe.
Starmer’s approach has also facilitated his government’s manifesto commitment to a reset in relations with the EU. Whereas previous governments tended to approach bilateral relations with EU member states distinct from the relationship with the EU, Starmer saw improved bilateral relations as an integral part of the government’s reset with the EU. The two-pronged approach is most evident in the proliferation of security agreement with strategic partners across the EU, which are complemented by the provisions of the May 2025 Defence and Security Partnership agreement with the EU. Bilateral agreements on developing energy cooperation, especially in hydrogen and wind energy with North Sea countries, also dovetail with the UK-EU common understanding on UK participation in the EU internal electricity market.
Under Starmer, the UK’s approach appears to have moved on from a tactic of using bilateral channels in a bid to secure more favourable EU terms. Playing one member state’s interest against another ended up reinforcing EU27 unity during the Brexit negotiations. The Sunak government’s decision to approach a select number of EU member states with a proposal for a youth experience deal was also perceived as an attempt to undermine EU27 solidarity. There is a better understanding that for EU member states, strong bilateral relations are part and parcel of appeased EU-UK relations, including the implementation of all existing EU-UK agreements.
When Starmer welcomed Pedro Sanchez to Downing Street on 3 September 2025 – a first visit from a Spanish prime minister in over seven years – the two leaders adopted a non-binding agreement on bilateral cooperation. The UK-EU political agreement on post Brexit arrangements for Gibraltar in June 2025 paved the way for the strategic bilateral framework agreement.
The UK has now signed bilateral strategic partnership agreements with all of the EU member states with the exception of Hungary. These agreements almost always cover a wide range of areas and often include provision for cooperation and exchanges between officials, in a bid to (re)establish channels of communication that were eroded or lost once the UK left the EU multilateral decision-making bodies.
Outside the EU, the UK necessarily relies much more on soft modes of cooperation at a bilateral level because of the constraints that EU membership exercises on EU member states. And whilst non-binding instruments do provide flexibility and agility, they can also leave bilateral cooperation more exposed to the effects of domestic political instability, principally in the form of delays or attrition. For instance, there were concerns over the implementation of the migrant return’s deal with France when the government collapsed early September. In other cases, smaller EU countries may not have the resources to fully invest in developing bilateral initiatives with the UK, despite the good intentions.
Finally, Starmer also has to contend with domestic challenges. Demands on his personal involvement in foreign policy matters will only increase in volatile political and security environments, which further exposes him to accusations he is neglecting the domestic agenda. Starmer may have proven himself a good diplomat, but so far, this is not a quality that has endeared him to the British public.
[1] Based on a publicly available information on 10 Downing Street webpage, Sunak welcomed five EU heads of states and government to Downing Street over the course of his premiership (President Duda of Poland, 16 February 2023; Prime minister Meloni of Italy, 19 April 2023; Prime minister Kristersson of Sweden, 19 June 2023; Prime minister Rutte of The Netherlands, 7 December 2023; and prime minister De Croo of Belgium 5 February 2024.
