“We are in a critical situation”, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said as she arrived for the talks in the Slovakian capital on Friday.
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“We are in a critical situation”, she told reporters.
Mujtaba Rahman of political risk consultancy Eurasia said the summit may only end up advertising “the scarcity of common ground” among the EU-27 and the weakness of its most important leaders Merkel, Hollande and Italy’s Matteo Renzi.
However, at the final presser, journalists’ questions inspired Juncker, Tusk, and Fico to elaborate on the EU’s post-referendum relations with the UK.
The 27 leaders – minus British Prime Minister Theresa May – say they want to show they can respond to the challenges of mass migration, security, globalisation and a stuttering economy.
“We have no other choice but to search for solutions”, the Lithuanian president stressed.
In a sign of how hard the split may prove, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, holder of the EU’s rotating presidency, said the European Union should ensure it doesn’t “damage our interests” by granting too many concessions to the British.
All the European Union leaders insisted there will be no formal Brexit talks until Britain triggers the two-year divorce process and says what it wants. “We have to show with our actions that we can get better”.
“Prime Minister May was very open and honest with me”, Tusk said of his visit to London on September 8.
Taoiseach Enda Kenny is in Bratislava attending a summit meeting of the 27 states that will remain in the European Union when Britain leaves.
Proposals for what Germany has called an EU “defence union” include the creation of an EU military headquarters, with medical aid and logistics capabilities, that would command EU crisis missions.
The EU official, however, added that the rest of the EU was willing to start negotiations as early as the next day.
Standing at his side, Jean-Claude Juncker, the head of the European commission, vowed there would be no compromise on free movement of workers.
Meanwhile, at the Bratislava summit, Juncker reiterated that Britain can not get access to the European single market without accepting the free movement of workers.
But several leaders, including Italy’s Matteo Renzi and Hungary’s Viktor Orban, shattered the facade of unity as soon as the meeting ended, underscoring how divided the bloc remains after years of economic crisis, a record influx of migrants and a series of deadly attacks by Islamist militants.
“The summit proved that as far as the migration wave was concerned, European Union policy was a failure”, Fico said. More concrete proposals would be presented at a summit in March of next year that coincides with the 60th anniversary of the bloc’s founding Treaty of Rome.
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According to European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker access to single market could not be possible for United Kingdom without the country accepting free movement of workers.
