EU
to move in different speeds despite Polish reservations
Text
of the Rome Declaration says countries will move in the same
direction but ‘at different paces and intensity.’
By FLORIAN
EDER 3/25/17, 3:38 PM CET Updated 3/25/17, 4:54 PM CET
ROME — The EU will
move on with further integration without always waiting for the
stragglers, European leaders pledged in Rome Saturday.
“We will act
together, at different paces and intensity where necessary, while
moving in the same direction,” the declaration signed by EU leaders
on the 60th anniversary said.
It added that this
would happen “as we have done in the past, in line with the
Treaties and keeping the door open to those who want to join later,”
a move to accommodate criticism most articulately voiced by Polish
Prime Minister Beata Szydło.
German Chancellor
Angela Merkel echoed the softeners in the text when she told
reporters that “we want to get in the same direction” but spoke
of a multi-speed EU as a reality: “A Europe of different speeds
doesn’t mean that it’s not a common Europe,” she said after the
ceremony.
Luxemburgish Prime
Minister Xavier Bettel told AP that he “preferred a two speed
Europe to a cul-de-sac and no speed at all.” The two-speed idea, he
claimed, was originally one by the benelux countries. “We in
Benelux were alone at the beginning, but then one country after other
joined because we saw that certain countries took us as hostages,”
he said, implicitly referring to Poland’s unsuccessful fight
against Council president Donald Tusk’s reappointment earlier this
month.
Tusk called for
those unhappy to work constructively together. “Today it is not
enough to call for unity and to protest against multiple speeds,”
he said in a speech in front of the 27 EU leaders (minus Britain’s
Theresa May who is busy writing a letter to formally trigger Article
50 that will be delivered in Brussels on Wednesday).
European Commission
President Jean-Claude Juncker, European Parliament President Antonio
Tajani, Italy's Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni, European Council
President Donald Tusk and Malta's
“It is much more
important that we all respect our common rules such as human rights
and civil liberties, freedom of speech and freedom of assembly,
checks and balances, and the rule of law,” Tusk said, referring to
his home Poland and echoing repeated calls by the European commission
for the Warsaw government to respect judicial independence.
“Europe as a
political entity will either be united, or will not be at all,”
Tusk said, adding that “the unity of Europe is not a bureaucratic
model. It is a set of common values and democratic standards.”
The summit marked
the signature of the Treaties of Rome in 1957, which Commission
president Jean-Claude Juncker praised as having “sealed our Union
forevermore”. He said the people in the room should be proud of
having seen decades of peace on the EU’s territory.
“After so many
wars, so many battles — why are we not proud of this? Because it
wasn’t our generation but our predecessors?”, Juncker said.
Tusk drew more
concrete lessons from history. “Today in Rome we are renewing the
unique alliance of free nations,” Tusk said. The “great
predecessors” of today’s leaders “at that time did not discuss
multiple speeds, they did not devise exits, but despite all the
tragic circumstances of the recent history, they placed all their
faith in the unity of Europe,” Tusk said.
Authors:
Florian Eder
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