The European Union wants the 44 countries gathering for an inaugural summit in Prague of the European Political Community, EPC, on Thursday to highlight Russia’s international ‘isolation’ over Moscow’s war in Ukraine, the bloc’s top diplomat said.

However, the summit will likely be dominated by differences about how to cap gas prices to contain soaring energy costs driven by the war that are taking the air out of the post-COVID economic recovery.

A brainchild of French President Emmanuel Macron, the EPC brings together the 27 member states of the European Union and 17 other countries, including several waiting to join the bloc and the only one ever to leave it, the United Kingdom.

This meeting is a way of looking for a new order without Russia he said.

Borrell stressed the EPC gathering included countries from Britain to Serbia to Turkey, stretching from the Caucasus to the North Sea and the Mediterranean.

Borrell had said on the eve of the summit that the many leaders would meet for just half a day for an “initial exchange.” Questions about the forum’s ultimate purpose, membership and functioning remain unresolved.

Some have already written off the EPC as just another talking shop, one that will be difficult to manage not just because of its size but also because of its diversity and the traditional rivalries between many of its members, from Armenia and Azerbaijan to Greece and Turkey.