The president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, sought yesterday to rally support for the European Union, saying the bloc battered by the UK Brexit referendum was not about to break up despite its existential crisis.
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Juncker stressed a need to do away with old divisions, and appeared to reached out to eastern European Union states that have refused to accept refugee quotes, saying that solidarity on refugees “must be voluntary”.
“That is why we will propose before the end of the year a European Defense Fund to turbo boost research and innovation”.
“When you travel in Europe with your mobile phone, you will be able to feel at home anywhere in Europe thanks to these new roaming rules”, Mr Juncker told the European Parliament in Strasbourg.
The leaders will launch a “Bratislava process” of reforms that they aim to approve at a summit in Rome in March 2017 to mark the 60th anniversary of the founding of the European Union, a senior European Union official said.
“We should also move towards common military assets, in some cases owned by the EU”.
“The facts are plain: The world is getting bigger”.
The launch of a €44bn “Investment Plan for Africa” and neighbouring regions, which Juncker hoped member states will match up to €88bn.
The EU’s Lisbon Treaty, which took effect in 2009, foresaw a mechanism for permanent defense cooperation inside the bloc, but squabbles among member states have prevented the topic from even being broached at meetings of EU leaders, said Marcin Terlikowski, a European security expert at the Polish Institute of International Affairs. The people of Europe “don’t want this petty envy between the various institutions”.
Juncker said he insists the European Union have a greater role in organizing each member’s military to provide greater security to the region.
PRS for Music CEO Robert Ashcroft (pictured) said: “PRS for Music welcomes the Commission’s recognition of the critical “transfer of value” issue and we acknowledge the clear intention to redress the current imbalance of interests between user upload platforms and rightsholders”.
In a bid to make Europe’s digital economy more competitive in a tough global marketplace, he also unveiled plans to shake up copyright laws and roll out free wifi across towns and villages by 2020 and 5G mobile phone coverage by 2018.
Such changes, he adds, will “create a further two million jobs in the European Union”. Any later would send the wrong signal to the markets, he said.
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Set up last year to run for three years until 2018 with a target of mobilising 315 billion euros of investment, the current EFSI target is based on 21 billion euros of European Union money being leveraged 15 times by other investors.
