EU pledges to work on ‘European Geopolitical Community’

The EU said Wednesday it would work to create a “European Geopolitical Community” that would be a sort of waiting room with privileges for neighbouring countries hoping to join the bloc.

European Council chief Charles Michel pledged to put the project on track around the middle of the year, fleshing out an idea put forward by French President Emmanuel Macron to MEPs last week.

“I will propose that a conference be held around or after the summer” that would bring together EU leaders and partner countries “to discuss the concrete options,” Michel told the bloc’s advisory European Economic and Social Committee.

AIMS OF ‘GEOPOLITICAL ECONOMY‘

“The aim is to forge convergence and deepen operational cooperation to address common challenges, peace, stability and security on our continent,”

he said.

Macron, addressing the European Parliament on 9 May, described a European “community” that would have at its core the EU but also include countries in its orbit, such as Ukraine and Britain.

The French leader, who is championing EU reforms to make the bloc’s decision-making faster, presented it as a structure that would get the EU and its neighbours coordinating closely on common issues and possibly extend some advantages of the bloc to them.

POLITICAL OBSTACLES

It comes as Ukraine and Western Balkan countries hoping to swiftly join the EU find their aspirations butting up against procedural and political obstacles.

Sebastien Maillard, director of the think tank the Jacques Delors Institute, said the nugget of the community idea was first raised in 1989 by then French president Francois Mitterrand.

It was seen as “a European political space beyond the European Union that could be a first step towards joining or, according to the wishes of the country, an alternative to that,”

Maillard said.

Michel said he foresaw the structure holding summits at least twice a year, and with foreign ministers from neighbouring countries sitting alongside EU counterparts for regular meetings.

© Agence France-Presse