“It’s insane, even when we had the Bush-Putin meeting in 2005 here, it wasn’t so bad”, said one local, referring to the former U.S. and current Russian leaders.
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EU President Donald Tusk had warned on the eve of the summit that leaders must “have a sober and brutally honest assessment of the situation”. Merkel said the bloc simply had to improve but her influence as leader of the EU’s biggest economy has been undermined by her unpopular decision to open Germany’s doors previous year to almost a million refugees. But Dr Merkel said the bloc simply had to improve.
Leaders pledged never to return to “uncontrolled flows” of migrants of a year ago, but the term “chaos” used often by Tusk was scrapped, as it was deemed too grim by some. European Union member states will further bring down the number of irregular migrants and ensure full control of the bloc’s external borders.
European Union leaders decided that the December regular summit should determine a concrete implementation plan on security and defence, and on how to make better use of the options in the treaties to make headway.
At the end of the year, the 27 also plan to seal a deal on the doubling of the investment fund, proposed by European Union commission president Jean-Claude Juncker. The clashes over economic policies have created political turmoil in other states just as they have in France, Austria and Italy as defenders of economic reforms in these European countries call for a shift in Eurozone budget discipline.
Disagreements over taxation, immigration and the EU’s relations with Russian Federation and Turkey were bound to happen, he said.
Years of economic and financial crisis have pushed up unemployment in many member states.
Slovakia’s Prime Minister has claimed Europe will make sure leaving the European Union is “very painful” for the UK.
At a press conference after the summit, Fico hailed the summit as a success.
Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi was also dissatisfied with the summit.
She did though recently say at a G20 summit in China this month that “it would not be right for me or this government to give a running commentary on [Brexit] negotiations”. But he complained that the current “self-defeating and naive” migration policies would remain.
Even the decision to not invite the United Kingdom drew dissent: “I think it’s unfortunate to have summits without the United Kingdom”, said Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, walking into the castle.
Through the forum of the Visegrad group – an informal alliance of Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia which meets regularly before summits – these countries are becoming an increasingly powerful voice.
“People have concerns of what’s going on and of insufficient control”. The entire process may take about two years.
Germany accepts now that mandatory refugee quotas do not work, and the flexible solidarity idea is something it can live with. “I mean the interests of the 27 countries, not the leaving country”.
A series of meetings were held in Bratislava as the European Union gets to grip with the reality that discussions with Britain are going to happen in the near future, most likely at the beginning of 2017.
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Tusk said Friday that “she declared that it is nearly impossible to trigger Article 50 this year”, referring to the rule that covers exit negotiations.
