Invitation letter by President Charles Michel to the members of the European Council

Dear colleagues,

I would like to invite you to our upcoming European Council meeting on 23 and 24 March in Brussels.

We will begin at 11:30 on Thursday with the UN Secretary General, António Guterres, joining us for a working lunch discussion. As in June 2021, I hope we will have a fruitful exchange on key geopolitical issues and global challenges.

At our meeting thereafter, we will first discuss Ukraine. At the start of the meeting, President Zelenskyy will join us by video conference. We will, as always, reaffirm our unwavering commitment to assist Ukraine. This includes pursuing work on accountability, on the use of frozen Russian assets and rallying the global community behind the rules-based international order.

Crucially, since our last meeting in February, we have been working on urgently scaling up our production and delivery of ammunition to Ukraine. Our aim is to provide Ukraine with 1 million rounds of ammunition within the next 12 months, and to ensure adequate funding. To this end, we will need to take measures to boost the manufacturing capacity of the European defence industry.

Building on our February European Council, which focused on a number of immediate measures, we will also discuss the EU’s long-term competitiveness and the further deepening of the single market. Adding to the Commission’s recent proposals on the matter, now is the time to capitalise fully on our strengths and address our shortcomings. This involves examining ways to boost the EU’s innovation capacity, and strengthen our Capital Markets Union in order to spur investment to reinforce our technological base and achieve our green and digital transitions. We will also hold an in-depth exchange of views on our trade policy in the light of today’s geopolitical context.

On energy, our priority continues to be to guarantee security of supply at affordable prices. We will discuss ways to achieve this goal.

At our February European Council, we tasked the Council and the Commission to review the implementation of our conclusions on migration. The President of the Commission and the Swedish Presidency will therefore offer us a short debrief on the matter.

On Friday 24 March, we will have our Euro Summit in inclusive format, where Presidents Lagarde and Donohoe will join us to discuss the economic and financial situation. We will also address the coordination of our fiscal policies, exchange views on economic governance, and take stock of the financial architecture of our Economic and Monetary Union.

I look forward to greeting you all.

• Invitation letter