Juncker tells EU to junk old rules for ‘new chapter’

European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker on Wednesday revealed his plans to save the European Union (EU), warning the troubled bloc must now write a “new chapter” after Britain’s expected exit in 2019.

The former Luxembourg Premier laid out five “pathways to unity” for EU leaders to consider at a special summit in Rome on March 25 to mark the 60th anniversary of the bloc’s founding treaty. They range from reducing the EU to just a single market, to creating a “multi-speed” Europe in which like-minded countries can push on with plans even when others disagree.

Since the shock Brexit vote last June, the other 27 EU states have been soul-searching about how to deal with challenges, including rising populism, the election of Donald Trump as the US President and an increasingly assertive Russia.

“Rome must also be the start of a new chapter,” Mr Juncker says in the ‘White Paper on the Future of Europe’, which is 32 pages long, including appendixes.

“A united Europe at 27 needs to shape its own destiny and carve out a vision for its own future,” said Mr Juncker, who unveiled the plans to the European Parliament in Brussels.

He said he hoped EU leaders could draw their first conclusions based on his suggestions by the year-end, and decide on a course of action by European Parliament elections in June 2019. The plans have already met resistance from poorer, newer eastern European states who fear they could be frozen out by the traditional “big guns” of France and Germany, particularly on the issue of immigration.