Charles Michel reaches for his peak

Council president calls an EU-Sahel summit to be held in Brussels in March.

All hail Charles Michel, master EU summiteer!

He’s only been in office a month and a half, but the European Council president has already mastered the No. 1 responsibility of his job: calling summits.

Michel, a former Belgian prime minister, used a summit on Monday evening of the five African countries that make up the G5 Sahel coalition, hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron in Pau, France, to call his own EU-Sahel summit, to be conjoined with the Council’s own next regularly scheduled summit in late March.

The meeting in Pau stretched past midnight — often the mark of a fruitful summit in Brussels because it demonstrates EU leaders’ commitment to talk purposefully with each other about purposeful things, and also because contentious decisions prove easier to take when the last hold-outs are not just mentally drained, but also physically exhausted.

Michel’s spokesman confirmed on Tuesday morning that the five African nations — Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger — had accepted the Council president’s invitation, and that the Council chief’s proposal “is validated.”

What senior EU leader doesn’t crave validation?

In all seriousness, the Sahel is becoming a major priority in Brussels, and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has said that she will make a priority of strengthening the EU’s ties to all of Africa.

The EU is increasingly worried that the dangerous situation in the Sahel could spiral out of control. Jihadist terrorists have mounted an increasing number of attacks in the region, where the French military has long led counterterrorism operations. The U.S., which also has a military presence there, is considering reducing its forces in Africa.

Michel led his first regular European Council summit in December and managed to find a way to get new climate targets approved — claiming the required unanimity by getting all the other EU countries to grant an exception to Poland, which opposed the new goals. At times, summit success is more art than science.

With EU leaders needing to negotiate a new long-term budget, Michel could end up presiding over a marathon of summits this year. A first special meeting on the budget, the Multiannual Financial Framework, is expected to be held in late February but has not yet been confirmed.

In Pau, Macron seemed to achieve his goal with agreement on a concluding statement, in which the leaders all expressed a wish for continuing French military involvement in the Sahel. And Michel achieved his goal, demonstrating that special EU skill of using a meeting to plan and win agreement on another meeting.

After all, talking is better than fighting. And in the EU, not talking is not an option.