They came smiling, but the task was immense. After dozens of summits at which a hesitant and discordant EU had failed to agree on anything like a cohesive plan for the end of the war in Ukraine, this one had, suddenly and vitally, to be different.
The leaders of France, Germany, Poland, Italy, Spain and – speaking for the Nordic and Baltic states – Denmark, plus Britain’s prime minister and the heads of Nato and the European Commission and Council, arrived in Paris reeling from a historic week.
