Emmanuel Macron has unveiled plans for the UK, Ukraine and other non-EU countries to team up as part of a new “European political community”.
Joining the group “would not necessarily prejudge future EU membership”, he told the European Parliament in Strasbourg on Monday, and “nor would it be closed to those who left it”.
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New world order
Politico reported that “virtually no specifics about the proposal” were provided by Macron, who was inaugurated for his second term as president on Saturday. And the Élysée Palace “did not provide any fact sheets or other policy briefs as it has on previous occasions when Macron has laid out bold prescriptions for Europe”.
Instead, he “largely seemed to be improvising”, the news site added, “apparently even catching some of his own advisers by surprise”.
The French leader outlined a “political community” that would be open to “democratic European nations adhering to its core values in areas such as political cooperation, security, cooperation in energy, transport, investment of infrastructure or circulation of people”, said Reuters.
In a “wink to Ukraine”, the news site continued, Macron made clear that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s goal of joining the EU could “take several years” and that Kyiv needed to be given “some hope in the short-term”.
“Tomorrow we will have to build peace. Let us never forget that,” Macron said. “We will have to do this with Ukraine and Russia around the table. This will not be done with negation, nor with the exclusion of one or the other, nor through humiliation.”
The group would also be likely to “include countries such as those of the Balkans, Moldova and Georgia”, none of which are “ready for EU membership”, said The Times’ Paris correspondent Charles Bremner. The door would apparently be open to Brexit Britain too, with Macron “hinting” that countries who had left the EU might “want to be part of this new club”.
Big vision
Macron’s call for a new body “comes as EU states clash on how quickly to move forward with Kyiv’s membership application”, The Guardian’s Brussels correspondent Jennifer Rankin reported. The question will reach “a crunch point” in June, when “leaders decide whether to grant Ukraine candidate status”.
The French president is known to favour “a quick decision on candidate status”, and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, supported by “central and eastern European states”, has also championed a “speedy processing”, Rankin wrote.
But “western European members” are “wary about allowing Ukraine to proceed quickly”. They have cited concerns that Kyiv would be unable to “complete vital political reforms” ahead of joining the bloc, and argue that a speedy process would “stoke tensions” with six western Balkan states that have been “stuck in the EU membership queue for years”.
As well as offering an alternative for Ukraine, Macron’s proposed new organisation would afford the UK a chance to form a “closer relationship with Brussels”, albeit in an “EU-dominated” grouping, said The Telegraph.
But under Macron’s plan, countries such as the UK and Ukraine could “choose their level of integration with Brussels”, the paper continued. The proposal “has echoes” of his previous calls for a “multi-speed Europe” made up of “concentric circles”, and would probably leave “the UK on the outer ring of the new organisation”.
The “organisation that Macron described sounded a lot like the EU”, said Politico. But in “proposing new tiers of political affiliation” with the bloc, he also risks “calling into question some of the most treasured, cherished and unshakeable pillars of the union, including a balance of rights and responsibilities that entails fealty to EU law and payments into a common budget”.
And“ it was precisely Britain’s demands to enjoy privileges of membership while skirting obligations” that led to the country’s “recent and bitter separation from the EU”.
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