Post-Brexit concerns have reportedly prompted the European Union’s political leaders to draw up a controversial plan aimed morphing the remaining member states into a giant “superstate.”
German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and his French counterpart Jean-Marc Ayrault are scheduled to present the proposal to a meeting of an alliance of four Central European states – Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia –on Tuesday, the Daily Expressreported.
According to the scheme leaked to Polish news channel TVP Info, the 27 remaining EU members would be morphed into a single superstate based on three crucial areas -- internal and external security, the refugee crisis and economic cooperation.
Under the plan, the rights to have army, criminal law, central bank and taxation system would be taken from the member states and transferred to Brussels.
The member states would also lose what few controls they have left over their own borders for admitting and relocating refugees, according to the plan.
“Our countries share a common destiny and a common set of values that give rise to an even closer union between our citizens,” said excerpts of the proposal. “We will therefore strive for a political union in Europe and invite the next Europeans to participate in this venture.”
The plan sparked outrage in Poland with the Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski, saying, “This is not a good solution, of course, because from the time the EU was invented a lot has changed.”
“Therefore, I want to talk about this, whether this really is the right recipe right now in the context of a Brexit [Britain’s Leave vote].”
British people voted on Thursday to leave the European Union, raising concerns among the bloc’s leaders that rising anti-EU sentiments among citizens would cause similar moves across the continent.
A few weeks before the UK Leave vote shakes the Brussels, European Council president Donald Tusk warned that European people do not share the enthusiasm of some of their leaders for “a utopia of Europe without nation states, a utopia of Europe without conflicting interests and ambitions, a utopia of Europe imposing its own values on the external world, a utopia of Euro-Asian unity.”
Tusk warned that “the spectra of a break-up is haunting Europe and a vision of a federation doesn’t seem to me to be the best answer to it.”
Britain’s Leave vote has already prompted right-wing European parties in France and Eastern Europe to call for similar referendums.
