EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said a decision was taken to award 108 million euros ($121 million) in emergency funding to Bulgaria for border management at one of the most porous borders, with Turkey – a decision praised by Orban.
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The Leaders of the European Union gathered on Friday in Slovakia’s capital Bratislava to discuss the critical juncture of the weakened Union beleaguered by challenges of mass migration chaos, security, defense, and economy.
“We will all need to make compromises”, she admitted.
Merkel said the summit had “agreed on the agenda and the working plan” going forward to address issues like migration, where “the aim is to stop irregular immigration”.
The chairman of the European Union summit Donald Tusk said divorce negotiations with Britain should be held only after a notification from London and should be run in the interest of the remaining 27 countries of the bloc, rather than Britain’s.
The EU has been rocked by Britain’s decision in a referendum in June to leave the EU and is assessing the fallout on its future.
“We haven’t come to Bratislava to comfort each other”, Tusk said.
He revealed Prime Minister Theresa May had led him to expect, at their meeting last week in London, that this would “quite likely” be in January or February next year.
Ahead of the meeting, Mr Hollande said all members were aware of the challenges the bloc was facing.
Leaders want the summit to launch a process that ends with agreements when they meet in March in the Italian capital to mark the 60th anniversary of the bloc’s founding Treaty of Rome.
Greeted by soldiers in bright blue uniforms and ceremonial plumes, the leaders held a first round of talks in towering Bratislava castle and then lunched on a river cruise aboard a German-flagged boat down the Danube to informally discuss Brexit. An EU official said the initial discussions had been “honest, without recriminations” while Tusk had submitted his “roadmap” in the afternoon session.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said the summit had failed to change European Union immigration policies that he called “self-destructive and naive”.
Known collectively as the Visegrad Four, they will submit their own text of proposals at the summit, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said, underscoring the divide.
This belief is fuelling the hardline message on issues like freedom of movement that have emerged from Berlin, Paris and Brussels in recent weeks.
Though Greece may have secured its euro future past year after its third global bailout, it’s still struggling to deliver on its promises to creditors.
The statement outlined ways to tackle inflows of migrants to prevent a return to the “uncontrolled flows of previous year”.
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Diplomats said a busy morning of talks in Bratislava’s hilltop castle had remained civil and constructive in analyzing what was wrong.
