The 27 leaders, minus British Prime Minister Theresa May, hope their daylong talks in the Slovak capital will provide the broad outlines of a new “Bratislava roadmap” that should lead to a new-look European Union by next spring following the shock British referendum result in June.
Advertisement
The one-day Bratislava summit should be the first in a number of confidence-building meetings where a roadmap should be set up to culminate in a March summit in the Italian capital when the 60th anniversary of the EU’s founding Treaty of Rome will be marked or, in the best of circumstances, celebrated.
Years of economic crisis have pushed up unemployment in many member states, while a spate of attacks by Islamist militants and a record influx of migrants have unsettled voters, who are turning increasingly to populist, anti-EU parties.
According to former Slovak Finance Minister Ivan Miklos, it appears Brexit supporters didn’t have any strategy.
The summit host, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, is one of a group of leaders in ex-communist central and eastern Europe who has led a vocal revolt against Brussels and Berlin over their willingness to take in refugees.
One concrete step expected on Friday is agreeing a small European Union border guard force to help Bulgaria keep irregular migrants from coming over its Turkish frontier now that an European Union deal with Turkey has largely halted sea crossings to Greece.
Mr Schulz said Britain had “cut” its access to the single market and this was “a lose lose situation for both sides”.
Poland, The Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary are coming to Bratislava with their own plan for a “cultural counter revolution” in Europe. Gaping disagreements between governments mean merely the display of unity will count as an achievement; European Union officials are desperate to show that their club can thrive after the loss of one of its largest members.
Orban said that while the EU leaders had voted for voluntary refugee resettlement quotas, the EU parliament and the EU Commission transformed them into mandatory quotas. “Britain has made a decision to leave and there are questions about the future of Europe”, French President Francois Hollande said before the meeting in the Slovak capital. How to deal with the euro’s problems remains divisive – on one-side pro-austerity countries led by Germany, on the other more social-minded governments.
Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, though, insisted such internal quarrels have always been there.
Advertisement
After my consultations with the leaders, as you may know I have talked to all of them in the last two weeks, I am absolutely sure that no-one thinks otherwise. Besides, if Europe is so keen to get new military capabilities, a better and cheaper route may be to buy United States equipment off the shelf today, rather than to spend years and sink billions in inventing capabilities that the Americans already have. “Differences are of all ages”. We must demonstrate to our citizens that we are willing and able to protect them from a repeat of the chaos of 2015, ” he added.
