German Chancellor Angela Merkel stated on Monday that “the world will want to know” what is the common political future taken into consideration by Europeans on medium-term and said that she would address this issue with European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, who visited Berlin, according to AFP.
“People want to know how we imagine the (coming) political union along with the monetary union,” said the Chancellor at the beginning of her meeting with Barroso. Defining this vision on medium and long term is as important as short-term measures to fight crisis which will also be addressed during this meeting. This should serve to prepare a long-waited EU summit in Brussels on 28 and 29 June.
Barroso also insisted on the need to provide short-term crisis responses and longer term. “I think it’s very important to give immediate signs of being ready to do what is necessary to ensure stability of our currency,” he said, but at the same time “we need to talk about the future of our union, to make it complete with a political union”. “Things should go faster, we must go on,” he said.
For Merkel, one of the points that need clarification in the medium term will be the problem of the management of banks and “how much importance we give to placing the banks of systemic European importance under a special scrutiny.” She also noted a theme that pleased Barroso, the idea of a “banking union” in the euro area, which is slowly creating its way through the European leaders, but the German officials have indicated that for them it is a long term project.
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