Europe’s
‘play it safe’ summit
Not
everyone stuck to the EU’s solidarity script in Bratislava.
By
David M. Herszenhorn
9/16/16, 10:13 PM
CET
BRATISLAVA — With
27 of 28 European leaders in Bratislava Friday for a
confidence-building retreat — aimed at showing the world they were
unified in tackling the Continent’s myriad crises despite Britain’s
vote to leave the Union — senior EU officials tried leaving nothing
to chance.
When word came that
a luxury river-liner ferrying the leaders on a cruise along the
Danube might run aground if it docked for a planned museum visit,
officials quickly scrapped the stop. Instead, they announced, more
time would be devoted to an afternoon work session.
In the end, despite
the most careful planning, they could not prevent continuing discord
from casting a pall over their sunny day in the Slovak capital.
Though the leaders
clinched an agreement Friday on a tightly focused agenda for the
coming months, including stepped-up cooperation on military affairs
and and stiffer efforts to stop illegal migrants from entering
Europe, the Italian prime minister, Matteo Renzi, and the Hungarian
prime minister, Viktor Orbán, quickly criticized the results of
Friday’s meeting as insufficient.
Renzi pointedly
declined to join the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and the French
president, François Hollande, at a news conference following the
summit, saying he was unhappy with the conclusions reached on dealing
with migrants and Europe’s slumping economy — two issues that
have riven the EU for months.
‘Self-destructive
and naive’
“This meeting has
seen some steps forward, bur it’s still far away from the idea of
Europe that we have in mind,” Renzi said. Italy and other Southern
nations, including Greece, have expressed deep unhappiness with the
fiscal austerity policies supported by Germany and some Northern
countries.
“While we all
agree the European Union is not perfect, we also agree that it is
what we have best” — EU Council President Donald Tusk
It was difficult to
gauge the significance of Renzi’s assessment, and that of Orbán,
who called the EU’s migration policy “self-destructive and
naive,” given that they joined the other leaders in backing the
limited agenda for the coming months.
Still, their
negative comments contrasted sharply with the self-congratulatory
remarks of Merkel and Hollande, as well as European Council President
Donald Tusk and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker.
“Our assessment is
sober but not defeatist,” Tusk said at an evening news conference
where he declared the meeting a success. “While we all agree the
European Union is not perfect, we also agree that it is what we have
best,” he said. “That is why we are determined to correct the
past mistakes and move on with common solutions as the EU 27.”
Tusk and Merkel, in
particular, had engaged in aggressive preparations ahead of the
Bratislava gathering, separately meeting in person or speaking by
phone with each of the leaders, in a bid to quell disagreements —
at least for a day.
“The spirit of
Bratislava was very much a spirit of cooperation,” Merkel said at
her news conference with Hollande, adding that leaders had not
avoided tough subjects. “Everything was discussed,” she said. “We
didn’t just talk about European history and values.”
Friday’s
Bratislava retreat was purposely held far from the glass and concrete
government buildings in Brussels that have become a symbol —
unfairly perhaps — of bureaucracy and ineffective governance amid a
cascade of crises.
Still, the accord
reached even on just a modest agenda for the next few months was
hailed by some analysts as an important step given the competing and
often contradictory political imperatives facing European leaders,
especially those who will be campaigning for re-election in coming
months.
Mounting divisions
“Most leaders and
governments are in a survival mode and weak, therefore there’s an
overwhelming focus on domestic agendas across the EU,” said Milan
Nič, head of the Europe program at GLOBSEC Policy Institute, a think
tank in Bratislava focused on foreign policy and security issues.
“At the same time,
you have mounting divisions on multiple levels and crises that push
various groups of countries in one way or another,” Nič said. “So
it is important there is now a projection of agreement and consensus
on three or four areas.”
Holding the summit
in Bratislava also sent an important message, Nič said. “It means
Europeans getting together in eastern Europe in a new member state
capital, in the Visegrad capital and projecting unity in the interest
of all us.” (Visegrad refers to the regional grouping of the Czech
Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia.)
“Prosperity,
stability and security in Europe otherwise cannot be guaranteed. It
is only through the European Union that that is possible” —
Slovak President Robert Fico
Technically, because
of the absence of Prime Minister Theresa May of Britain, the
Bratislava event was an “informal” summit and leaders were unable
to take any official, binding action.
Nonetheless, they
agreed on a Bratislava declaration and “roadmap” for carrying out
a number of initiatives including a doubling of the size and duration
of a strategic investment plan put forward by Juncker.
With clear goals for
completing the initiatives between March and June 2017, the plan also
called for enhanced security cooperation, including a major push to
secure Bulgaria’s border with Turkey involving 200 extra border
guards and 50 vehicles.
Other initiatives
included an effort to provide free wifi service in major city-centers
by 2020 and to deploy 5G network access across the EU by 2025, and an
effort to increase voluntarism by expanding the European Solidarity
Corps.
The Slovak prime
minister, Robert Fico, said the Bratislava summit marked an important
display of resolve by EU leaders.
“We can’t go
into reverse, we must continue to go forward,” Fico said at a
closing press conference. “Prosperity, stability and security in
Europe otherwise cannot be guaranteed. It is only through the
European Union that that is possible.”
“It is true in the
European Union there are member states and they often have differing
views, different ideas,” Fico said. “We feel that for the future,
we need to be more concrete in what we want to do and also in
explaining what we want to do.”
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