The European Commission is doing some stocktaking after a tumultuous summer of the refugee crisis, the UK’s exit, terrorist attacks, high unemployment and a weakened euro with a state of the union address from the commission’s president. “We can no longer depend on the singular power of individual member states”.
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A possible stumbling block would be that an European Union army could undermine North Atlantic Treaty Organisation with a number of countries belonging to both blocs.
“More European defense in Europe doesn’t mean less trans-Atlantic solidarity”, Juncker said.
The reforms are likely to shift some wealth from internet services such as Google and Facebook to European telecom groups, which have largely missed out on the tech sector’s surging growth and have lobbied hard for more flexible rules that would give them more money to invest in faster broadband access.
He specifically said the European Union must do more in the defense field, and no longer be overly dependent on the U.S. He said it should start with the creation of an European Union military headquarters and work toward a common military force.
However, the article didn’t get off to a great start when the journalist recalled seeing Juncker down three glasses of cognac at the end of a lunch “after drinking many a glass of a white wine” when he was Prime Minister of Luxembourg. “We have to stop this war, according to which all success is national and all failure is European”, he said.
Obama added: “I’ll be honest, sometimes Europe has been complacent about its own defense”.
However, Guy Verhofstadt, the arch-EU federalist appointed by the European Parliament to negotiate Brexit talks, said “more Europe” would quash populist forces, not stoke them. But NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg cautioned earlier this month that “the thing we have to avoid is duplication”. “Never before have I seen such little common ground between our member states”, he said.
If Juncker’s proposals are enacted, “it truly will be a quantum leap in European Union defense cooperation”, Terlikowski said. A summit of the 27 European Union leaders in Bratislava tomorrow is also unlikely to shed much light on the Brexit issue.
“There are splits out there and often fragmentation exists”, he said. “The Americans want us to take more responsibility for our neighborhood”.
Benoit Machuel, General Secretary of the International Federation of Musicians, said: “What we need is a right for all performers to be paid each time a performance is used online on iTunes, Netflix or Spotify”.
British Conservative lawmaker Syed Kamall in contrast accused Juncker of indulging in the kind of “supranationalism” that turned so many Britons against the bloc.
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“The summit seeks to send a clear signal that the European Union remains strong and capable of reaching agreement and bringing improvements to the daily lives of its citizens”, said Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, the summit’s host.
