NAPLES, Italy Europe needs to invest in defense, education and culture while breaking free of bureaucratic rules, Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said on Monday ahead of a meeting with the leaders of Germany and France.
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The three leaders were speaking ahead of a working dinner aboard the Italian aircraft carrier Giuseppi Garibaldi as the sun set over the Naples coast.
Renzi picked the symbolic site for the crisis talks on the European project’s future “to pay homage to what happened during what was perhaps the most hard moment in the history of European identity”.
Renzi is campaigning for greater flexibility on European Union deficit rules to help his flagging economy.
The German leader also said she saw no fundamental obstacles to setting up joint military units with Estonia, much as Germany has already done with other countries, including France.
In this context, the decision of Merkel, Hollande and Renzi to visit the grave on Ventotene of Altiero Spinelli only further highlighted the EU’s historic bankruptcy.
She also says European nations need to continue to cooperate in their fight against the smuggling of migrants across the Mediterranean and to protect Europe’s external borders. The situation in Europe is unstable since the last events as Brexit, the terrorist attacks that had been happening all across Europe and the Sirian emigrant’s problems about whether they are welcomed or not. That is the responsibility of the (European) Commission – it’s not one (EU) member state that decides vis-a-vis another. “For many years we were against the Europeanisation of this issue, now we want more European cooperation”, she said.
Still, handling negotiations with the United Kingdom will come at a complicated time for Europe with ongoing economic situations in the eurozone, Ukraine flaring up again, crises stretching from Libya to Syria, security threats at home, the fallout from the failed coup in Turkey, and ongoing refugee flows.
Spinelli, along with another anti-fascist confined to Ventotene in the 1940s, co-wrote the “Ventotene Manifesto” calling for a federation of European states to counter the nationalism that had led Europe to war.
In the coming days, Europe’s de facto leader will meet eight more European Presidents and Prime Ministers, as part of a concerted effort to stabilise the bloc.
“The stability pact has a lot of flexibility, which we have to apply in a smart way”, Merkel told reporters aboard the Italian aircraft carrier Giuseppe Garibaldi, where the leaders discussed topics from refugees, border controls and terrorism to jobs and investment.
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The document is considered the inspiration for European federalism. She also praised European Union collaboration with other countries to block refugees from traveling to Europe: “We will discuss migrants and control of the coastlines, but we need collaboration from neighboring countries”.
