EU future - everything in play

While the European Council today is preparing the EU´s 60th anniversary declaration without PM May attending, the growing lack of European unity makes it hard to deliver anything other than general phrases about the future EU.

At the summit yesterday Poland refused to accept a continuation for Donald Tusk as European Council President. The traditional consenus was stalled. “We know now that it [the EU] is a union under Berlin’s diktat,” the Polish foreign minister, Witold Waszczykowski, told Polish media.

Earlier this week France, Germany, Italy and Spain - "the big 4" - backed multispeed Europe (Juncker´s scenario 3), a future which the Visegrad group - Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and Czech Republic - does not like.

The leaders participating in the summit yesterday agreed to let a group of willing go ahead with plans to set up a European public prosecutor to probe financial crimes against the EU budget. EU Observer writes: "The move is largely procedural but also symbolic for an EU currently debating the possibility of a so-called multi-speed Europe, where some countries can forge ahead with deeper integration."

The multi-speed strategy is an old idea. When the frontrunners successfully achive added value, the slow ones will be tempted to follow. And integration will be strengthened. 

But the consequences of multi-speed seems more likely to be confusion and disintegration. What matters most is the tasks unifying all the 27 member states. They are the basis and the core of the Union. So instead of escalating multi-speed, the strategy should be to democratize, concentrate and streamline a one-speed European Union.