Responding to the State of the Union address by European Commisison President, Jean-Claude Juncker, ECR Group co-chair Ryszard Legutko said: “When Juncker talks about the current state of Europe I think we must be living in two different worlds.
“The real questions that we should ask ourselves today is – is the European Union in a better shape now than when Juncker took office? The answer is a very clear – No. There has never been a time in the history of EU integration when the countries of the EU have been this disunited. We support the general idea to strengthen the EU’s external borders, but we should have been talking about it a long time ago. Instead the Commission, and certain Member States, spent two years on a deeply divisive mandatory relocation system that stood to achieve very little from the outset,”, he added.
“Removing national vetoes on foreign policy will create more problems and an even greater feeling that Member States are not all equal, and, that certain countries and their voices count for more. With the problems we have today we cannot say that the Commission has no share in it. They’ve had successes but too many people have been antagonised, bullied and marginalised. We have to roll back this process,” Legutko said.
