BRUSSELS, May 8. /TASS/. European Union leaders did not touch upon relations with Russia at the Social Summit in Porto, Portugal, on Saturday, a diplomatic source in Brussels told TASS.
"There was no discussion about Russia, since it had been scheduled for the next European Council meeting (the EU summit in Brussels on May 25 - TASS) and at the European Council [at the Foreign Affairs Council on May 10]," the diplomat said.
"The discussions focused on the issues of development and social construction in the European Union, the fight against the pandemic, vaccination acceleration and the access to vaccines worldwide. Informal summits have no rigid agendas, and each leader can raise an issue of concern in the speech, but time limitations make it impossible to discuss all the current issues," the source added.
The relations with Russia were not mentioned even once at the summit’s final press conference, which was attended by President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Council Charles Michel and Portugal’s Prime Minister Antonio Costa.
Earlier in the day, the Czech daily Mlada fronta DNES reported that Prime Minister Andrej Babis asked his European counterparts at the Porto summit to consider expelling "at least one" Russian diplomat from their countries over the Vrbetice incident in 2014.
Russian-Czech tensions
On April 17, the Czech authorities claimed that Moscow was involved in the 2014 explosions at the Vrbetice depots in the country’s east, which killed two people, and expelled 18 Russian embassy employees, calling them intelligence officers. The Russian Foreign Ministry protested against the move and declared 20 employees of the Czech Embassy in Moscow persona non grata.
Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova pointed out that over the past seven years, Prague had had neither grounds nor any evidence to accuse Russia of its involvement in the Vrbetice incident.
Against the backdrop of this diplomatic scandal, the Czech authorities asked their EU and NATO partners to show solidarity. On April 22 and 23, Slovakia, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia voiced support for the Czech Republic. Slovakia expelled three Russian diplomats, Latvia and Estonia one diplomat each, and Lithuania two. On April 28, the Russian Foreign Ministry responded in kind expelling three employees of Slovakia’s embassy, two Lithuanian diplomats and one employee each from Latvia’s and Estonia’s embassies.