EU leaders ‘renew’ fraying bloc’s vows
Union marks 60th ’versary
ROME, March 25, (RTRS): Europeans must contain their squabbling and carping about the EU if the Union is to survive, leaders warned on Saturday as they marked the 60th anniversary of its founding in Rome by signing a formal declaration of unity.
Four days before Prime Minister Theresa May, absent from the ceremony in the Italian capital, delivers an unprecedented blow to the bloc’s growth by filing Britain’s formal exit papers, her fellow leaders hailed 60 years of peace and prosperity and pledged to deepen a unity frayed by regional and global crises.
But days of wrangling about the wording of a 1,000word Rome Declaration, May’s impending Brexit confirmation and tens of thousands of protesters gathering beyond the tight police cordon around the Campidoglio palace offered a more sober reminder of the challenges of holding the 27 nations to a common course.
“We have stopped in our tracks and this has caused a crisis of rejection by public opinion,” said their host, Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni, noting Britons’ repudiation of the EU.
He said the failure to push the project forward during a decade of economic slump had fueled a re-emergence of “blinkered nationalism”. Rome offered a fresh start: “The Union is starting up again ... and has a vision for the next 10 years,” he said.
Others, however, are wary of such enthusiasm for giving up more national sovereignty — and also of others in the Union moving faster with integration. Poland’s nationalist government has led protests against a “multispeed Europe”, which it fears would consign the poor ex-communist east to second-class status.
Leaders hailed the visionary “war generation” of leaders from old foes France and Germany who signed the Treaty of Rome in the same room on March 25, 1957, along with Italy, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands; some offered personal memories of their own generation’s debts to the expanding European Union.
Ruins
Jean-Claude Juncker, the EU chief executive, recalled how his father in Luxembourg was forced into the German army in World War Two; Donald Tusk, the summit chair born in Gdansk a month after the Treaty was signed, remembered growing up in the ruins of war and yearning for freedom behind the Iron Curtain.
“That really was a two-speed Europe,” he said in a pointed dig at his domestic foes now ruling in Warsaw, who have tried to block a push by the western powers to deepen their integration.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the bloc’s dominant leader who faces a re-election test in September, stressed the Union must also address the complaints of generations for whom war is fading into history. “We will in the future have to concern ourselves above all with the issue of jobs,” she told reporters.
Fearing that the departure of its second-biggest economy and major global power could prompt the unravelling of the bloc, many leaders argue that only forward motion can revive popular support for the EU by generating economic and security benefits.
“Today we renew our vows and reaffirm our commitment to an undivided and indivisible Union,” Juncker told them, urging the bloc not to get bogged down in details that alienated voters.
Tusk, too, warned against the impression the EU was about petty regulations: “Why should we lose our trust in the purpose of unity today? Is it only because it has become our reality? Or because we have become bored or tired of it?” he asked.
Merkel said leaders wanted to respond to people’s concerns, about the economy, welfare, migration and defence with “a protective Europe” that offered assurances on their wellbeing.
All 27 national leaders, along with the heads of Brussels institutions, signed a declaration which concluded: “We have united for the better. Europe is our common future.”
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VATICAN CITY: Pope Francis told Europe’s leaders on Friday the continent faced a “vacuum of values” as they marked the EU’s 60th birthday, condemning anti-immigrant populism and extremism that he said posed a mortal threat to the bloc.
Prime ministers and presidents from 27 EU member states have descended on Italy to mark the 1957 founding Treaty of Rome, receiving a papal blessing on the eve of the anniversary.
However, celebrations have been tempered by a string of crises, including prolonged economic turmoil, an influx of migrants and Britain’s decision to leave the bloc, that have raised fears for the future of the union.
“When a body loses its sense of direction and is no longer able to look ahead, it experiences a regression and, in the long run, risks dying,” Francis told the leaders gathered in an ornate, frescoed chamber in the heart of the Vatican.
Just six nations signed the original treaty in 1957 and on many levels the EU can be viewed as a success, swelling to embrace 28 countries gathered in the world’s largest trading bloc and blessed with rising life expectancy and solid prosperity.
But with anti-European parties gaining support, the pope warned of a growing split between EU citizens and their institutions and said greater solidarity was the “most effective antidote to modern forms of populism”.
The Argentinian-born pontiff told the leaders they needed to promote Europe’s “patrimony of ideals and spiritual values” with greater passion and vigour.
“For it is the best antidote against the vacuum of values of our time, which provides a fertile terrain for every form of extremism,” he said, mentioning the attack in London this week by a British-born convert to Islam, who killed four people.
The pope has repeatedly criticised Europe over the past five years for its perceived lack of vision, drawing the ire of German Chancellor Angela Merkel in 2014 when he described the EU as an elderly woman who was “no longer fertile and vibrant”.
He adopted a less hostile tone on Friday, but urged the continent not to close in on itself and resurrect walls — a message aimed as much at US President Donald Trump as at EU leaders struggling to deal with mass immigration.
Some 1.6 million refugees and migrants reached the European Union between 2014 and 2016 and how to handle them has been a major point of contention between member states.