Italy, Germany, France eye EU reboot
After Brexit, their focus shifts to boosting security
ABOARD THE AIRCRAFT CARRIER GARIBALDI — The leaders of Italy, France and Germany vowed Monday to boost joint European security efforts in the wake of Islamic extremist attacks as they made a symbolic bid to relaunch the European Union after Britain’s vote to leave.
From the deck of the Italian aircraft carrier Garibaldi, which is spearheading the EU’s migrant rescue and anti-smuggling effort, Italian Premier Matteo Renzi, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Holland also promised new economic prospects to young people — albeit without any specific proposals or details.
The three leaders travelled to the island of Ventotene to pay tribute to one of the founding fathers of European unity, Altiero Spinelli, and show common cause going into a bigger EU-wide summit next month in Slovakia.
Spinelli, along with another intellectual confined to Ventotene in the 1940s by Italy’s fascist rulers, cowrote the “Ventotene Manifesto” calling for a federation of European states to counter the nationalism that had led Europe to war. The document is considered the inspiration for European federalism.
Renzi invited his French and German counterparts to the island off Naples to remind Europe of its founding ideals as the EU forges ahead amid a spate of challenges, from slow economic growth to extremist violence, after Britain’s vote to leave the bloc.
The three placed three bouquets of blue and yellow flowers — the colors of the European Union — on Spinelli’s simple white marble tombstone before meeting for an hour privately aboard the nearby Garibaldi.
“Many people thought that after Brexit, that Europe was finished. It’s not like that,” Renzi said from the deck. “We respect the choice of Britain’s citizens, but we want to write a page for the future.”
Renzi, Merkel and Hollande all voiced support for improved internal and external defense measures, including better intelligence-sharing and beefed-up border defenses, following a spate of Islamic extremist attacks in France that have rattled Europeans’ sense of security.
Renzi said such measures were an “absolute priority” for the EU going forward.
“Europe should have a framework of protection. For security we need to have borders that can be guarded,” Hollande said. “We also want there to be more coordination in the fight against terrorism.”
Merkel said the EU is currently facing “enormous challenges” and needed to work together especially on the security front at home and abroad.
“We feel that faced with Islamist terrorism and in light of the civil war in Syria that we need to do more for our internal and external security,” she said. “Defense cooperation ... should be strengthened and the exchanges between our intelligence services must be intensified.”
The three also called for greater economic stimulus measures to create jobs.
For Merkel, the visit to Ventotene marked the start of a string of meetings with other EU leaders to discuss the post-Brexit EU, with visits to Estonia, the Czech Republic and Poland in the coming days and meetings with the leaders of Slovakia and Hungary in Warsaw. Merkel has also invited leaders from the Nordic countries, the Netherlands, Austria and other Eastern European nations for informal meetings at a government guest house in Germany.