Juncker unveils post-Brexit EU unity plans
Print Edition
EUROPEAN Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker yesterday revealed plans to save the EU, warning the troubled bloc must now write a “new chapter” after Britain’s expected exit in 2019.
The former Luxembourg premier laid out five “pathways to unity” for European Union leaders to consider at a special summit in Rome on March 25 to mark the 60th anniversary of the bloc’s founding treaty.
They range from reducing the EU to just a single market, to creating a “multi-speed” Europe in which like-minded countries can push on with plans even when others disagree.
Since the shock Brexit vote last June, the other 27 EU states have been soul-searching about how to deal with challenges including rising populism, Donald Trump’s election and an increasingly assertive Russia.
“Rome must also be the start of a new chapter,” Juncker says in the 32-page “White Paper on the Future of Europe.”
“A united Europe at 27 needs to shape its own destiny and carve out a vision for its own future,” said Juncker, who unveiled the plans to the European Parliament in Brussels.
Juncker said he hoped EU leaders could draw their first conclusions based on his suggestions by the end of the year, and decide on a course of action by European Parliament elections in June 2019.
The plans have already met resistance from poorer, newer Eastern European states that fear they could be frozen out by the traditional “big guns” of France and Germany.
There has also been grumbling about the timing of Juncker’s plans shortly before crucial elections in the Netherlands, France and Germany.
One of Juncker’s option will be to allow EU countries to integrate at different speeds, with some nations choosing to cooperate more closely on areas such as the euro currency and defense even as others opt out.
Another is to concentrate on finalizing the EU’s single market of 500 million people, in a bid to end the economic crises that have beset the euro currency.
Further scenarios would be to defy the eurosceptics and follow the dream of a fully federalized Europe, or to follow the American model and focusing on a reduced agenda and leaving lesser matters to member states.
Finally he suggests keeping the status quo, with EU countries trying to stay more unified, but with the downside that it would mean more bitter arguments on issues like migration.
In Rome, the 27 EU leaders will issue their own declaration on the future of the bloc, focusing on the next 10 years. They are eyeing a further summit in Brussels on April 6 after British Prime Minister Theresa May formally triggers the two-year divorce process, sources said.
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