Testing Trump’s Board of Peace

Brussels Playbook Podcast

POLITICO

News, Politics, News Commentary

4.4 • 204 Ratings

🗓️ 19 February 2026

⏱️ 16 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The EU is taking a careful seat at Donald Trump’s first meeting of the Board of Peace — sending Mediterranean Commissioner Dubravka Šuica, but not signing up to the initiative. What does that say about Brussels’ strategy toward Washington? POLITICO has also obtained a letter from nine EU countries urging the European Commission to explore the possibility of an EU fund to support cross-border abortion access — a move that could reopen one of Europe’s most sensitive debates. Finally, the Commission wants to accelerate trade deals by giving their English versions a head start — allowing political approval to move ahead before all 24 official language translations are finalized, which would trim months off the process. Zoya Sheftalovich is joined by Sarah Wheaton. Please get in touch with your comments and ideas for future topics — you can reach us at our WhatsApp number: +32 491 05 06 29. **A message from Amazon: Across Europe, businesses are growing with the AWS Cloud to build innovative, scalable products. From Europe’s largest enterprises and government agencies to the continent’s fastest growing startups, learn more about how AWS Cloud is helping businesses across Europe grow at AWS.eu.** Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Today's episode is presented by Amazon.
0:03.4	60% of sales on Amazon come from independent sellers.
0:07.3	Across Europe, over 280,000 small and medium enterprises
0:11.9	partner with Amazon to grow their business.
0:14.7	Learn more at aboutamazon.e.u.
0:18.3	Good morning. It's Thursday, February 19, and this is the Brussels Playbook podcast.
0:28.4	The vibe in Brussels today is morbidly curious as a European Commissioner is set to attend
0:36.5	U.S. President Donald Trump's first
0:38.8	formal meeting of the so-called Board of Peace to discuss Gaza.
0:43.5	And also on the podcast, we've got nine EU countries who are urging the European Commission
0:47.7	to act to help more women access abortion across the EU.
0:51.4	And Europe wants to get trade deals done faster. And its solution is found in
0:56.5	translation. Sorry about the joke listeners. I'm Zoya Shafdanovich, Politico's chief EU correspondent.
1:02.4	And with me today is our policy editor, Sarah Wheaton. Hey, Sarah. Hey, Zoya. Congratulations on the end
1:08.3	of your second week, anchoring a near daily podcast. How are you holding up?
1:13.1	I am eating twice as much sugar and sleeping half as much, Sarah. So what about you?
1:18.4	That sounds very playbooky. Well done. All right, Sarah. Let's move to our first story today.
1:23.6	We've got the Commissioner for the Mediterranean, De Dubrovka Schweitzer. She's in Washington
1:28.2	today for the first formal meeting of this Board of Peace that Donald Trump has dreamt up.
1:33.5	He came up with this proposal in Davos in January, and we had sort of a flurry of countries
1:39.3	saying, yes, they'll go, no, they won't go. And where we've landed is the EU. It's not going as a member of
1:46.5	the Board of Peace, but we've got Dubrovka-Schweitzer coming in to sort of observe what's happening.
	...

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