Today’s summit between the European Union and Russia may do more to expose the rifts between the 27 European members on how to approach their eastern neighbour than it does to improve relations with Moscow. The gathering is an uncomfortable exercise in giving Russia under its new President the benefit of the doubt, with a significant wing of the EU not really convinced that it wants to do so at all. The equally mixed messages from the Kremlin have shown that while the relationship could get much better under Dmitri Medvedev, the new President, it could indeed get much worse.

The EU’s important divisions over Russia show how the row over the Lisbon treaty has been a preoccupation with form at the expense of content. It is a distraction to mourn the lack of a common foreign minister for the 27 countries (one of the creations of the treaty) while there is so little agreement on what that policy should be towards Russia, the single most important question facing the EU. The summit was delayed for months, partly because Eastern European members, in disputes with Russia over energy and trade, rejected any negotiation on behalf of the bloc as a whole. Yesterday Finland opened a new front in a row over timber trade.

Britain is embroiled in disputes that have brought a frost to relations. These include its request for the extradition of an alleged suspect in the 2006 murder in London of Alexander Litvinenko, a former Russian intelligence officer; disruption of British Council activities last year; and a disagreement on how harshly to respond to Iran’s nuclear programme. As a chilly backdrop, there is also the worsening dispute between BP, the energy group, and its Russian partners in its TNK-BP joint venture. Stan Polovets, chief executive of the AAR consortium that owns the other half of the venture, argued in London yesterday that “from our position, this is all about poor performance” of the five-year-old venture, denying that the bitter tussle over its management had political inspiration.

On the other hand, within the EU there are those actively urging a warmer relationship with Moscow. Germany, at the April Nato summit in Bucharest, blocked a US call to let Ukraine and Georgia begin talks about membership, partly on the ground that the move would offend Russia. This year Bulgaria signed a gas pipeline deal that will strengthen Russia’s control of Europe’s energy supplies (it contributes a quarter of the EU’s needs).

The EU’s hope is that President Medvedev will have less of the aggrieved and confrontational tone of Vladimir Putin, his predecessor, who picked him for the presidency, and that he will not turn out to be a puppet of his patron. He has been keen to emphasise continuity, but has sounded very different in tone, and his early remarks have emphasised the importance of law, and of curbing the interference by government of business.

But it is clear from this summit that, with oil at its present heights, the EU’s relations with Russia are not going to be simple, or cheap.

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