Angela Merkel offered measured encouragement to those demanding wide-ranging reforms of the European Union ahead of her first summit since securing a fourth term as German chancellor last Sunday.
French President Emmanuel Macron set out a road map this week for deepening EU ties on security, the economy, the environment and foreign policy over an hour and 40 minutes on Tuesday, echoing European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker’s call for more integration in his state-of-the-union speech earlier this month. Those speeches were greeted with skepticism by some other EU leaders, with Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen describing the French leader’s speech as “verbose.”
“The speeches by Juncker and Macron contained important building blocks,” Merkel said at a briefing ahead of a pre-summit dinner Thursday in Estonia’s capital, Tallinn. “But we still have to talk about the details.”
Merkel was due to sit down with Macron before joining a dinner of 27 European leaders. Theresa May will attend the meeting looking to add momentum to the negotiations over Brexit after signaling last week she’s ready to compromise on the bill for leaving the EU. Spain’s Mariano Rajoy is skipping the summit to focus on the crisis in Catalonia, where the regional government is trying to set up polling stations for an illegal referendum on independence on Sunday.
--With assistance from Helene Fouquet and Ian Wishart
To contact the reporters on this story: Arne Delfs in Tallinn at adelfs@bloomberg.net, Andra Timu in Tallinn at atimu@bloomberg.net, Ott Ummelas in Tallinn at oummelas@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Alan Crawford at acrawford6@bloomberg.net, Ben Sills, Michael Winfrey
©2017 Bloomberg L.P.
