Merkel, Macron call for more EU militarism at Mesenburg conference
German Chancellor Angela Merkel hosted French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday at Mesenburg, as Berlin and Paris tried to settle on a common policy ahead of the upcoming European Union (EU) conference in Brussels at the end of the month.
The Mesenburg meeting had the air of a crisis summit. It took place barely a week after G7 talks with the United States broke down, and Washington moved to impose trade war tariffs on tens of billions of dollars in EU exports. Merkel is facing an unprecedented challenge in her own government, as Interior Minister Horst Seehofer threatened to defy her authority by unilaterally reinstating national border controls targeting immigrants, after meeting with officials of far-right governments in Italy and Austria.
-snip-
Before Macron and Merkel met, French Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire appeared on BFM TV to appeal for an EU great-power policy. “We must propose, as our president has, a new European project on immigration to consolidate the European Union in a world where the United States is on one side, China on another, and we are trapped in between,” he said. He warned that Europe is “disintegrating” and demanded joint policies against immigration and “financial risks.”
Ultimately, Merkel and Macron cobbled together an agreement pledging a drastic expansion of EU militarism, austerity and attacks on immigrants, working with the Italian and Austrian governments. With Rome now pledging to expel hundreds of thousands of immigrants and carry out a census of Italy’s entire Roma population, paving the way for mass round-ups on a scale unseen in Western Europe since the Holocaust, the EU is preparing an explosive shift to the right.
Read more: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/06/20/mese-j20.html
= new reply since forum marked as read
