Want to work closely together: Merkel and Barroso
Berlin will be a symbol of the new Europe
- Thursday, 12 October 2006
After a meeting with the president of the EU Commission Jose Manuel Barroso in Berlin (11 October) German Chancellor Angela Merkel confirmed her views that she is against the procedure to adopt only single parts of the constitution. Therefore “the German presidency should have the goal of facilitating agreement on a roadmap, a timeframe, a way to proceed, and I want us to be very ambitious in engaging this goal”, said Merkel. But she made very clear that she wants to stick to the concept of a Constitution: “The final result should be a structure that is deserving of the word constitutional treaty, it should not only be a institutional regulation how to vote in the future.”
Despite the no in France and in the Netherlands and despite a high skepticism of huge parts of the EU citizens towards the EU Constitution Merkel knows exactly what she wants: “We need a constitutional treaty and we need it before the next European election”. "We will not be able to complete this issue in our presidency, but we want to do our part to reach an agreement that we need such a constitution," she said.
Barroso agreed and stated: “It would be very important for the EU to have a set of efficient rules to make it possible to handle the whole project in an accelerated way to enable Europe to act more cohesively towards the outside.”
During the German EU presidency there will be the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the treaty of Rome. For this purpose Merkel invited her colleagues to an extraordinary summit to Berlin. According to Merkel this meeting should also be a documentation of the fact that the separation of Europe would be over. And Barroso said enthusiastically: “Berlin symbolizes the new enlarged Europe”.
Sources: Tagesspiegel Die Welt Der Standard EUObserver