French President Emmanuel Macron wants to see a new Europe-wide political organisation created that would exist in parallel with the European Union.
Seemingly not content with the bureaucracy of the European Union, France’s newly returned president Emmanuel Macron has called for the creation of another Europe-wide political organisation that would run in parallel with the EU.
Macron called for the creation of such an entity during a speech in front of the European Parliament in Strasbourg marking the end of the controversial Conference on the Future of Europe.
According to a report by Le Parisien, the French President requested the creation of the organisation after saying that Ukraine’s potential admission to the EU — which currently is assessing whether it could join bloc — would take years if the union wants to maintain its standards.
Instead, Macron suggested the creation of an even broader organisation that would be able to accommodate the likes of Ukraine, as well as nations that have left the EU, hinting at the potential inclusion of the UK.
“This new European organization would allow democratic European nations adhering to our core values to find a new space for political cooperation, security and cooperation,” Macron said, describing his vision.
“Joining it does not prejudge future membership of the European Union,” Le Monde meanwhile reports Macron as saying. “As it would not necessarily be closed to those who left it.”
“We must unite our Europe in the truth of its geography with the desire to preserve the unity of our continent,” he went on to say.
Macron’s speech — which also covered the topics of his reelection and Russia’s role in the Ukraine conflict — occurred during the closing ceremony of the Conference of the Future of Europe, which some MEPs have criticised as having been used to push towards the creation of a transnational “federal superstate”.
The conference published over 300 recommendations — including the likes of the removal of the national veto and the creation of a joint-EU military — which would see even more state-level powers ceded to Europe.
“Once these [powers] go [to Brussels], you are no longer a separate state, but a province of something larger,” one critic of the conference, Alternative für Deutschland’s Dr. Gunnar Beck MEP, told Breitbart Europe.
However, these concerns did not seem to cause much concern for the proponents of the recommended measures, who celebrated the end of the project within the parliament chamber with music and interpretive dancers.
This last part in particular was seemingly not to the taste of everyone, with Brexit mastermind and Ex-EU-level representative Nigel Farage expressing relief that he had managed to escape the union before the event occurred.
“There are many reasons why I am pleased to no longer be an MEP,” the populist firebrand wrote online. “Not having to witness this “interpretive dance” is one of them.”