“The facts are plain: The world is getting bigger”.
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The commission said it would amend insurance and banking legislation by the end of the year to “further unlock private investment in infrastructure and small and medium sized enterprises”. He also said there was “respect and regret” at the UK’s decision and called for Brexit negotiations to take place as quickly as possible.
However, Britain controls when divorce proceedings will begin – and it’s in no hurry.
The head of the European Union executive urged Britain to trigger its formal divorce as quickly as possible for the benefit of both sides.
“We propose today to equip every European city with wireless internet”, Juncker said.
The former Prime Minister of Belgium, who led the European Council between 2009 and 2014, suggested that the main reason for the referendum result “lies in Britain”, and that the country “had not many friends anymore”.
The project, WIFI4EU (Wi-Fi for you), aims to put free Wi-Fi hotspots open to all EU citizens in parks, squares, libraries and other public buildings.
The British government should officially begin the exit talks with the European Union at the end of the year or the beginning of 2017, said Moscovici.
EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker delivers his State of the Union address at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, eastern France, Wednesday, Sept. 14, 2016.
While EU states mostly agree on steps to discourage labor migrants from reaching the EU en masse, they differ on how to treat refugees and are locked in bitter disputes on how to handle those already there. The government won’t answer that either.
Those nations that aren’t keen on the idea should not be shut out, it says, but should be allowed to form a huge, regional market that trades freely with the EU while rejecting political union.
He denied leaders wanted to “punish” the United Kingdom for leaving, but said there was a desire not to encourage other countries to follow suit.
Some of the more hard-line free-marketeers in May’s Conservative government favor the “hard Brexit” scenario, believing it will make the economy more competitive.
“Europe is a cord of many strands – it only works when we are all pulling in the same direction”, Juncker said.
Britain gave its voters a choice, and the deplorable galloping populists on that side of the ocean told establishment politicians that enough is enough: We want our voices heard over the regulation setting, unaccountable bureaucrats that form Juncker’s army. Retail sales, house prices and industrial production have all held up, and inflation and unemployment have stayed low – though official data released so far only includes about a month of post-referendum activity.
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More than three-quarters of European Union government defence contracts are awarded to their national industries, while the bloc has 19 types of armoured infantry fighting vehicle, compared to just one in the United States, according to European Union data. “But that could be wrong – in either direction”.
