Bratislava
summit: Donald Tusk urges EU leaders not to waste Brexit crisis
As
the EU meets for a special summit without the UK, EC president says
Brexit crisis is an opportunity to steer a new course
Jennifer Rankin in
Bratislava
Friday 16 September
2016 08.56 BST
Donald Tusk, the
president of the European council, has urged the European Union not
to waste a crisis, as the bloc’s leaders gather in Bratislava for a
special summit – without the UK – hoping to set a new course for
a project battered by Brexit.
Tusk, the former
Polish prime minister who chairs EU leaders’ summits, hopes to cool
tempers after Luxembourg’s foreign minister called for Hungary to
be thrown out of the EU for allegedly treating asylum seekers “worse
than wild animals”. Hungary counterattacked with stinging criticism
of the grand duchy’s record in helping big corporations avoid tax.
On the eve of the
summit, Tusk called on EU leaders to take a “brutally honest”
look at the bloc’s problems, declaring: “We must not let this
crisis go to waste.”
“We haven’t come
to Bratislava to comfort each other or even worse to deny the real
challenges we face in this particular moment in the history of our
community after the vote in the UK,” said Tusk.
“We can’t start
our discussion ... with this kind of blissful conviction that nothing
is wrong, that everything was and is OK,” he added. “We have to
assure ... our citizens that we have learned the lesson from Brexit
and we are able to bring back stability and a sense of security and
effective protection.”
Tusk hopes to focus
on areas that the 27 leaders can agree on: border security,
counter-terrorism and moves to “bring back control of
globalisation”. Officials are playing down expectations of results
from the meeting at Bratislava castle, in the capital of Slovakia,
one of the four Visegrád countries along with Poland, Hungary and
the Czech Republic.
The Hungarian prime
minister, Viktor Orbán, promised that the Visegrád group would
present a plan to tackle the EU’s problems, which he said would “be
an important moment in the life of these four countries”.
In a radio interview
released on Friday morning, Orbán also said he expected migration
pressure to increase in the Balkans again, once the weather worsens
and sea routes to Italy become more difficult.
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Officials close to
Tusk hope for small but symbolic breakthroughs, most notably an
agreement to send an extra 200 border guards and 50 vehicles to the
EU’s external frontier in Bulgaria by next month.
Agreeing on stronger
border defences is the easy bit. The thorny issue of sharing the cost
of protecting refugees is likely to continue to strain unity.
Visegrád group members are fiercely opposed to the EU executive’s
attempts to fine them for not accepting refugees in their countries.
Hungary has flatly refused to take in refugees under an EU quota
scheme, while many other countries are falling short.
Orbán has called a
referendum for 2 October on the EU relocation plan, which would see
1,294 asylum seekers sent to the country.
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Ahead of the vote,
the European commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, appeared to
offer an olive branch to his opponents. In his annual state of the
union address, he said solidarity “must come from the heart” and
could not be forced. One EU source said it was too early to say what
this meant for the policy, describing it as “a semi step back by
the commission that might be a useful way out”. Another EU official
said the dispute was “a cancer we have to cure”.
In the citadel that
towers over the Danube, Tusk will brief leaders on his recent meeting
with the British prime minister, Theresa May, although officials say
there is little to report. The EU refuses to negotiate with the UK
until the government triggers article 50, a position that is likely
to be reaffirmed at the summit. EU leaders are also likely to repeat
the mantra that Britain must accept freedom of movement in order to
gain access to the single market.
In a recent letter
to EU leaders, Tusk said it would be “a fatal error” to assume
that the UK vote was a specifically British issue, describing it as
“a desperate attempt to answer the questions that millions of
Europeans ask themselves daily” about security, cultural heritage
and way of life.
This view is found
across EU institutions. “Brexit is a symptom of broader issues,”
one EU diplomat said. “It is not as such the decisive factor, it is
a wakeup call.”
Many Brussels
insiders see little chance of repairing the bloc while France and
Germany are preoccupied with elections in 2017.
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