The meeting will reflect on the situation in the European Union after the Brexit vote and focus on the vision for its future: what kind of Europe do its citizens want, how to respond better to their expectations and how to overcome that challenges confronting Europe.
According to the President, Brexit has revealed long-standing problems in the European Union and in member states. The political elite has distanced itself from ordinary people, does not listen to their problems, does not hear their concerns. Instead, it tends to blame the European Union for failures in domestic policy.
Populists and eurosceptics, the President said, cannot be allowed to set the tone in political space. We need to keep to responsible policies and to deal, swiftly and efficiently, with migration, security and economic problems. We need to find those areas of cooperation where a unified response to the challenges of today would be the most effective.
The EU-27 summit in Bratislava will launch a discussion on the future of the Union. The vision of tomorrow will be further developed at the EU summit this coming December, at the informal EU meeting scheduled for February in Malta and, later, at the meeting in Rome held to celebrate 60 years of the founding of the community.
