Russia’s expanded BRICS meeting sends jitters around Europe

An expanded meeting of emerging economies taking place in Kazan, Russia, is sending jitters among EU policymakers.   

The club formed in 2009 now includes not just Brazil, China, India, Russia and South Africa – original members whose acronym gave it the name BRICS, and whose leaders Xi Jinping, Narendra Modi and Vladimir Putin are set to meet over the coming days.   

As of 1 January, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates also joined the club – creating a bloc worth over 37% of global GDP – and one potentially at odds with other institutions such as the G7 and NATO.   

But the threat to the existing US-led hegemony isn’t immediate, the Carnegie Endowment’s Stewart Patrick has argued.   

"It's an informal club, they're mostly united in the sense of what they're against,” namely an economic order they feel is stacked against them, Patrick, a senior fellow at the think tank, told Euronews.  

With free trade fraying, the invasion of Ukraine, and tensions in Taiwan, the EU relationship with China has grown increasingly fractious, and with Russia it has more or less collapsed.   

But expanding BRICS membership could actually weaken the alliance, Patrick argued.   

“As it adds new members, the diversity and heterogeneity is just going to make it even more difficult for BRICS to come up with coherent worldviews and policies,” he said.  

"The whole thing looks really impressive on a big map of the world ... but in terms of its unity, that's, I think, where you would have to scratch your head and look twice,” he added. 

With regional rivals China and India, the grouping already had its internal tensions; new members such as Saudi Arabia and Iran were “historically mortal enemies,” Patrick said. 

The most